2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt | Hacker News Reader

2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

arstechnica.com

166 pointsingve170 comments

They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.

which remains for me the main reason why regardless of it is now being cool again I still avoid it like the plague. another funny thing is that they have improved their OS security so much that it is now considered harder than Linux, and Apple

Do you have a source for Windows 10 being considered more secure than OS X or Linux? Didn't expect that designation to fall on a spyware-as-OS product.

perhaps my context was unclear. I was considering number of vulnerabilities among the different OS. that has actually little relation to the other problem that it is of course as spyware-as-OS.

> I was considering number of vulnerabilities among the different OS. that has actually little relation to the other problem

That's like Apple deputizing OS X's vulnerabilities as "features" and calling it quits.

My test for defining vulnerability derives from whether a reasonable, knowledgeable party would put sensitive information on the system. Windows 10 fails this test. I find it difficult to see how anyone would describe its as "hardened," hence the request for a source.

Security is in a way orthagonal to privacy.

A product can be secure from malicous attack whilst still leaking information to the Operating System provider, unless of course you don't trust the provider of your OS, in which case you're completely stuffed anyway :)

Microsoft have made a lot of advances in the security field and have a generally good relationship with the security community. In contrast, I would perceive Apple as having a less good relationship with the security community (they're very secretative about what they do, they've taken actions like revoking Charlie Millers Dev creds for pointing out vulnerabilities). Linux is of course not uniform enough to e able to assign a single value to it but there are some potential concerns about their view of security bugs as just being like any other bug...

ok sorry I thought this really is common knowledge so didn't provide a link.

http://betanews.com/2015/02/22/os-x-ios-and-linux-have-more-...

https://www.gfi.com/blog/most-vulnerable-operating-systems-a...

Sorry, but I'm classifying your first link as FUD. (And the second has no clear conclusion.)

It's are incredibly misleading, as it:

- doesn't take into account the severity of the bugs; - doesn't take into account the time to fix the bugs, or if they are still open; - bundles some OSs, while separating Windows on several different categories; - compares OSs with incredibly different lifespans; - compares OSs with incredibly different amount of included software.

It's an article created to make Windows look artificially good, nothing more than that.

I was hoping someone would be updating a list of IPs and domains which you could simply block at the router level

Edit: better link https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/blob/master/...

There are some things I love about Windows 10, like virtual desktops (welcome to the 90s Microsoft!) but there are some things that irk me:

* Pretty login screen photos, with a link at the top-right saying "Like what you see?". I click the link expecting to get the source for the image, instead I get "Cool, we'll show you more like that." So much for that nice new desktop background I was hoping for.

* Automatic updates leak RAM like a bloody sieve. I have 16GB of RAM, and every time it downloads an automatic update that RAM will inevitably fill to the brim. Eventually it'll also fill the page file, and the whole thing virtually grinds to a halt until I finally reboot and install the updates.

* Automatic update finishes and I see a friendly message saying "don't worry, all your files are right where you left them!" Two minutes later I see "Program X is not compatible with this version of Windows, so we uninstalled it for you."

* Frequently resets default programs to MS applications, usually as a result of a large automatic update. The inconsistency of this is the weirdest bit, it never resets the default browser, but every few weeks I have to re-set the default PDF reader and image browser.

* Managing screen resolutions/positions is not "advanced". Microsoft needs to sort out their configuration screens, this half-arsed hybrid Win10/Windows 9X system is just getting worse and worse.

I've had many of these same problems, with the addition of automatic driver updates breaking my display and forcing me to spend an hour fixing their (M$, lenovo, I don't care. read: Not My) mistake.

I've searched, but have you found a list of those login screen pictures? I want them.

My display breaks often as well, but I can't tell if it's my AMD drivers or Windows. Either way, it's more steps than should be necessary to just "put things back the way they were" when it happens.

I haven't dug into the login screen pictures at all. After my first attempt to get the source, I just gave up on it. The funny thing is, if they hadn't put that "Like what you see?" link in at all, it wouldn't be as big a deal. It would still be a bit disappointing that I couldn't easily get to the source, but the fact that they got my hopes up and then disappointed me makes it that much worse.

You wouldn't happen to have a Killer Network chipset, would you? There has been a bug in it for a long time (since Windows 8, at least) that causes it to gobble up memory in a particularly frustrating way because the utilization doesn't show up in Task Manager. Installing the latest version of the Killer Networking driver fixes it [1].

You can also prevent the bug by disabling the Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver by changing the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Ndu to "4" (disabling it).

1. http://www.killernetworking.com/support/driver-downloads

It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup.

Doesn't a default Android phone also do a lot of calling home? And Apple phones? Why is it so special when it's Windows?

Apple has a history of avoiding the storage of personal data when possible. They also have a history of failing to comply with the demands of authorities to release personal information.

On the other hand, Microsoft has a history of complying with government authorities.

Apple has a history of telemetry collection without any checkboxes whatsoever. Consider http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/82765/osx-yosemi... and the existence of "com.apple.telemetry" as well as telemetry collection in their kernel and announcements on stage when they show how many people use certain features of OS X or iOS.

There was also a story that broke a while ago that text files in text editor would get stored in the cloud by default, even if they were not saved.

> It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all.

Not true at all! It's impossible, without a hardware firewall. Their kernel network driver whitelists several microsoft domains and IP address ranges. What's worse Microsoft back-ported that phone-home crap and ships them as updates to Windows 7 and 8.x (of course the coincidentally stopped writting descriptions for their Windows updates). Not even mentioning how they force end users to upgrade to Windows 10 by displaying Windows 10 ads as popup dialogs and renaming Windows update buttons to click on the Upgrade button by accident, etc. It will hurt Microsoft's reputation a lot.

With Android and iOS an end user with a little bit of knowledge (power user) can deactivate the analytics, cloud sync and error reporting "features" by changing a handful of settings. Windows 10 resets the privacy settings every major update (Threshold 2), they go even as far as change the name of exe files and registry keys. It's not too late to fix Win10 and MS reputation though, do something in 2016.

It can be turned off in version 1511 for Enterprise and Education editions, under Group Policy: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...

See screenshot and guide at http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/30/windows-10-and-privacy/

Alternatively, disable this service if concerned: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/19/microsoft-rena-and-telemetr...

I asked at the Microsoft store for an Enterprise edition of Windows and they told me it's not sold to consumers (they tried to tell me I want Windows 10 Professional).

I'm not a student or a teacher, so I don't think I can buy the education edition either.

You need 250+ users for Software Assurance through Enterprise Licensing programs: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/5/1F5357DD-F7C8-4...

However, through the MOSP (for 5-250, now called "Microsoft Online Services"), you can get Windows Intune with Software Assurance for Windows for $11/user (at least when it was announced), which includes Software Assurance, which then includes a copy of Windows 10 Enterprise (to upgrade/install on PCs for licensed users) as well as management tools.

There's a way to add Office 365 on a per-user basis to your Intune subscription as well, as long as you maintain annual commitments (or some gibberish like that). I'm not entirely clear on the details, this is why Microsoft usually has folks call in for pricing and such. But I hear it's easy to manage.

There's two methods of enterprise/education licensing, per user and per machine. Home/Pro are sold per-machine only, with varying features. See license agreements for details ;-)

Ultimately, you can disable most/all of the Windows 10 spying yourself without special editions of Windows, they just make it easier for folks paying the big bucks.

You can buy Win10 Enterprise with Software Assurance through Open Licence just fine too (and even the renewal isn't that expensive). More precisely, what it gains you is access to the "Security" telemetry level.

All can be turned off in Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Servicing Branch) - it's very expensive and not sold to consumer nor small business at all.

But think about your doctor, your lawyer, etc. many smaller business, cheaper Windows 10 editon (non LTSB) they will unintentionally leak your confidential personal data. You say such PCs shouldn't be online at all? But they are and many of them run on Windows. Scary.

You say [doctors', lawyers' and many smaller businesses'] PCs shouldn't be online at all? But they are and many of them run on Windows. Scary.

And almost certainly very illegal in a lot of places. Not only do you have whatever routine data protection rules apply, but in cases like medical data or legally privileged information there are higher standards required in many jurisdictions as well.

I work for a company that has to maintain HIPAA compliance, and we're all utterly horrified by Win10.

Technically the bit about it not being sold to small business is not true. You can get LTSB through Software Assurance through Windows Intune licensing on a per-user basis through Microsoft Online Services for companies of 5-250 people.

And you don't need LTSB or Enterprise/Education SKUs to turn them off, you just get more convenient toggles there. Ultimately you're responsible for what services run on your computer, and your computer's configuration. If you don't trust the OS manufacturer, as someone else pointed out, why are you running their code in the first place? ;-)

Because you have external requirements (the software you need to run only supports Windows, there aren't any outsourced IT providers in your area that know how to manage any other OSes, regulators will be confused, etc.) that demand you run the OS regardless of whether you trust it.

Or because you don't trust any of the other options either, which is an entirely reasonable stance.

I wish people would stop downvoting posts that make reasonable points in a civilised way. The parent post gave two perfectly sensible and polite answers to the question that was asked, even if not everyone might agree with them.

they will unintentionally leak your confidential personal data

How?

You're a defendant in a trial against the government. You open an Explorer window that tries to render a preview for a PDF document titled "Doug Malone's Testimony." The PDF is busted and the preview renderer errors out, posting the error message with the file name automatically to Microsoft. The government subpoenas your Microsoft account, trolls the error reports and learns your legal strategy.

It didn't matter if the file was on your super duper secret encrypted drive. It doesn't even matter if it's in the file name; maybe the preview code dumps the whole file contents in the error report. Maybe the preview code is buggy and just logs file names. The report is cached until you're next connected to the Internet and delivered as part of "routine diagnostics."

Note that error reporting in Windows has been there since XP though.

If the government were after info like this I doubt they would spend too much time trolling through crash logs, why not just subpoena your email or phone logs.

> But think about your doctor, your lawyer, etc. many smaller business, cheaper Windows 10 editon (non LTSB) they will unintentionally leak your confidential personal data.

Are they more likely to than if they were using Windows 7? Or OS X, for that matter?

You make it sound as if Microsoft's software is actively trying to steal personal information, instead of just sending boring shit like "what error code did that crashing application just produce". Sure, it's possible that Windows 10 is more likely to leak data, but I'm not going to just accept it without at least a tiny bit of evidence.

There is a good article on the difference between different telemetry levels here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...

> they will unintentionally leak your confidential personal data

any evidence of that beyond "it phones home!"?

Why isn't this a feature that consumers can have?

The line I always hear from Microsoft apologists is that "You can turn these features off at any time", but everything I've seen suggests this is only true for Enterprise and Education.

Because the point of modern Internet-based services is to collect analytics and telemetry for marketing and engineering without annoying consumers with unnecessary checkboxes. There's a minimum amount of sync you want to make easy because it's a feature, not a bug. That new releases contain functions old software didn't have is called progress. Why does Apple or Ubuntu get a free pass when Microsoft doesn't?

That's fine, then. Leave the checkboxes out.

But at least give consumers the option. Even if it's in Advanced Settings, just like every other obscure privacy invading Microsoft feature.

> It's a feature, not a bug.

Really? You might want to rethink your talking points here... There really isn't a good connotation with this phrase.

I criticize Apple and Ubuntu equally, as well. Apple's telemetry is comparable, though it is worth saying they've made major public pushes for privacy. This is not to say I trust them, but the effort is noted. (In fact, elsewhere in this thread I criticized Apple for sending data to iCloud.)

Comparing Ubuntu telemetry to Microsoft's is disingenuous at best, and outright deceptive at worst. I'm not a huge Canonical fan and I disagree with some of their practices, but saying they are at the same degree of privacy violations as Microsoft is ludicrous.

Why do you think ordinary users should try to disable all the cloud based features of their OS? Surely a lot of the features they want (e.g. Google Now, Siri, Cortana) are based on the OS provider knowing about the users and having information about them.

If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

"Our research shows that users WANT these features that require us to constantly monitor microphones for certain phrases."

Maybe the OS provider should stop being hostile.

Was that said by the people doing Siri, Google Now, or Cortana?

I don't think they're being hostile, I think they're providing features they think people want.

Personally I hate this kind of feature and try to actively avoid products which have it, however I feel I am in a minority of general consumers in that feeling.

>If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

No, the threat model is that centrally collected data will be pilfered by the government or the company itself. If it's just not collected in the first place the temptation won't be there to abuse it.

It's like saying, "if your threat model is that the government is hostile, there is nothing you can do to prevent them from getting information from you."

There are lines the government won't cross (e.g. US govt torturing your family members in front of you) and there are lines Microsoft won't cross (e.g. secret exfiltration of your files).

And on that basis all modern consumer focused OS' are about as bad as each other, they all rely on cloud features which gather data about the user and hold it centrally.

It's why I'm so puzzled that people jump on MS specifically for this, Google have been doing all the same stuff for years and no-one seems to care.

That said on your lines that people wouldn't cross, I'm afraid I have not confidence in either of your examples. The US gov. has totured people for years, I see no reason to believe they wouldn't do it to family members if they thought it would meet their goals, and MS would exfiltrate data if provided an appropriately authorised requirement by the US government...

It's why I'm so puzzled that people jump on MS specifically for this, Google have been doing all the same stuff for years and no-one seems to care.

Probably because until recently, Microsoft software is what you used if you didn't want to use those cloud-everything services from organisations like Google.

> If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

I'm not sure what this even means in this context. It's not about protecting against a threat model that may someday manifest, it's actual, specific actions that are known to be occurring currently and that can't be opted out of (let alone opted in to) that are being objected to.

And certainly nothing to do with "cloud based features" of Windows 10.

Your phrasing is a little odd. Personally, I don't think users should necessarily turn those features off, but if they don't want to use the feature, I don't think they should be forced to keep it on, either. I don't see why it can't be opt-in.

> If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

IMO, it has less to do with the OS provider being hostile and more to do with eating up resources and increasing available malware attack vectors.

I don't think that users are forced to keep the features on are they (definitely I had no problems disabling them when installin Win10)

On defaults I would prefer it to be opt-in but I know exactly why it isn't. Software vendors want you to use the features they develop so that you'll be more involved in their ecosystem, if they're off by default chances are you won't turn them on, which defeats the purpose.

Gotta say I don't see your resource point, do you have any evidence that these features have an appreciable impact on the average system?

Why do you think ordinary users should try to disable all the cloud based features of their OS? Surely a lot of the features they want (e.g. Google Now, Siri, Cortana)

The thing is, almost every piece of research I've seen from independent sources suggests that most users don't really want or care about these digital personal assistant gimmicks. Once you got past the hype, this was a point a few different articles made around the time Win11/Cortana became available.

That certainly seems more credible to me than the story the OS vendors' marketing teams would like us to believe. After all, I know plenty of people who use Android and iOS devices, but in my entire life I don't think I have heard the words "OK Google" spoken non-ironically outside of a tech presentation, and I have also literally never seen (heard?) anyone using Siri other than to show how badly it got something wrong and laugh at it. I mean, anecdotes and data and all that, but if almost everyone I know has a smartphone and literally no-one I know seems to be using these features that we're told users want, that's an astonishingly unrepresentative sample.

I hope that you're correct, as then you would expect the market to correct the mistake and drop the features, as they don't get used

I expect that, in time, that is exactly what will happen. Realistically, some of these features will probably evolve into something that is more useful for more people.

Unfortunately, for the immediate future there is a lot of momentum behind these features, because so many corporate heavyweights have spent a fortune on promoting them. It would be borderline career suicide for any senior executive in a relevant position to hold their hands up and say they made a mistake on this one so soon.

I'd love to learn more about what's explicitly whitelisted, and can't be blocked by DWS or other on-system resources.

I've tried Googling, but it's hard to find pages which discuss it without knowing the right terms to search by. Can you help provide a link so I can learn more?

Why do you put cloud sync and error reporting features into scare quotes? For a developer, the error reporting features are awesome and users get direct benefit from them (bugs squashed faster).

I would take a crash dump over a poorly written (or nonexistent) bug report e-mail any time.

Windows PCs are not used for the same thing as smartphones. Most people don't have all their critical financial or business information on their phones; that's what PCs are for ("real work"). Most people probably don't care too much if Google knows that you're using Tinder.

Android and Apple Pay suggest other intentions.

that's an interesting perspective, but I'm not sure it chimes too closely with what I've seen these days.

in the UK at least most banks have mobile apps which run on android, people do e-mail (which controls most of their sensitive information) and other items on mobile devices, so their security would be every bit as important as a windows/OSX PC...

Windows 10 runs on everything from USB thumbdrives to 84-inch Surface Hubs, including smartphones, tablets, 2-in-1s, laptops and desktops. If you remove all the corporate machines (with control via Global Policies) then the majority are probably mobile.

Some of Windows 10's features come from the convergence with the smartphone platform (Notifications, Cortana).

As well as being a mobile OS that runs lots of mobile apps, Windows 10 also has cloud integration (OneDrive, Windows Store etc).

This shouldn't be a shock. Nadella has been saying "mobile first, cloud first" since he got the CEO job.

> Most people don't have all their critical financial or business information on their phones

Why would you imagine Microsoft was incorporating such info in its anonymized telemetry? It's not like telemetry was exactly a new thing.

As a matter of fact, Windows Update has been scanning people's hard drives for years (with MRT, the Malware Removal Tool), and collecting crash data since XP.

> Most people don't have all their critical financial or business information on their phones

Hi, it's 2015 calling, how are things in 2010?

Windows is not special. Android is not special. Apple is not special. I am equally upset at any operating system that chooses to collect and store information about me and how I use my device without my knowledge or explicit consent.

You don't get to point at some other examples of Bad Thing happening and hand-wave it all away like our concerns are not valid.

I agree that the outrage over Windows 10 seems a little...inconsistent. For Android users (could be on iOS too, not sure), open up Maps. Open up the options menu in the upper left hand corner and choose "Your timeline." This will literally show you every place you have traveled, WHETHER OR NOT YOU EVEN SEARCHED FOR A PARTICULAR LOCATION (i.e. it just shows where you've been walking around). You can delete the data and opt out I think, but it's not by default.

And that's just one thing off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many others. Ultimately, if you REALLY care about privacy you probably shouldn't be using any mainstream operating systems for mobile, desktop, etc.

Location History is opt-in, and Google sends you frequent email reminders that you are opted in. I have email reminders in my gmail account dating back to 2011 when it was still called Latitude.

If you want to see this info and/or enable/disable it: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

Except you opt-in by agreeing to use Google Now, e.g. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/google-now-for-androi...

I'm sure the implications of this isn't obvious for most people, just as express settings in Windows aren't obvious.

Google Now isn't all or nothing. It gracefully degrades as you disable each data source.

That's fine, but I don't personally recall a screen saying "Enable location but not location history" in my Google Now setup process. So they opt you in by default too. You can exclude data from Cortana's "Notebook" just as you can from Google Now.

can you say a little more about what these "frequent email reminders" that you receive look like, and how frequent they are? I've just discovered that I was opted in, had no idea I was opted in, and have never received an email saying I was opted in -- I'm genuinely curious what I missed. (Maybe somehow I opted out of the emails without knowing it either...)

>It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup.

That's completely wrong and only the willfully ignorant would believe that.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...

http://www.disclose.tv/news/a_terrifying_traffic_analysis_of...

Or from the horses mouth:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/11/02/microsoft...

When you set-up Android phone, there is a screen with four checkboxes, that you have to go around and check/uncheck them.

There is no button before this screen with "convenient" recommended defaults that rob you of privacy. You pretty much have to go through this screen, agree (or not) to each one and continue.

And later, as you use the device, there is no changing your preferences behind your backs.

Considering that Win10 has been shown to run an always-on key-logger that reports in to Microsoft every 5 minutes, I think it's safe to call this especially bad.

Everything you type, in every application you run, all the time. You can't block this "telemetry" with Windows either. Microsoft has hard coded the DNS entries to bypass HOSTS file checking.

Also voice and camera records get sent to Microsoft.

None of this is contingent upon having or logging in to your Microsoft account. You don't even have to be using Microsoft features like Cortana or Bing. Microsoft has made the business decision that if you are running their OS, you are using their computer, not yours. They seem to be right that the majority are willing to hand over the keys for a "superior user experience".

The only way to prevent 10 from phoning home is either to disconnect it from the Internet, or connect through a dedicated firewall machine which blocks the collection endpoints. Win 10 will still be running that key logger in the background, though. It's built in.

>spyware operating system

I'm not sure how is W10 different than Android/MacOS. Actually, on Windows you at least can skip the account registration. On mac you can't even get updates if you don't register. Android doesn't even let you use the OS properly without account.

> Android doesn't even let you use the OS properly without account.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, can you explain further?

I will say, that I've had a couple of Android phones for perhaps 4-5 years now and while I initially did use the bundled OS on my first one, I have never signed in with a Google account.. I use CyanogenMod now on a Nexus S with no Google apps and the phone doesn't seem to be without features that I might desire, indeed there are vast number of developer options that I don't use. Certainly there are third party apps that I know exist that I just can't get (F-Droid is limited sometimes) but that is not really OS functionality in my opinion.

You are an outlier. For 99% of the users (not an accurate figure, of course) using Android without the Play Store is not viable.

Using Google's android is not, but you could get amazon, or whatever. It's part of the ecosystem, if you buy into Amazon's you get their store, if you buy into Google's you get their's. If you want neither, you have to figure that out, or a new company needs to handle that situation.

Even Google's android is viable to use without Google Account.

I've used a (company-issued) Sony phone for two years with in a such way, that the only account on the phone was for our Exchange, with built-in E-mail, Calendar, Contacts apps. Granted, the Play Store was not available, Youtube and Maps didn't work, but they were not the reason why I had that phone.

A huge part of the value for users is the google ecosystem.

It just got closer to the other leading operating systems (iOS and Android). They claim that they need telemetry, which I find reasonable from a technical standpoint. The lack of opt-out is annoying, however, given Microsoft's bad public image I think people would opt out in masses if they provided this option.

So I don't think the data they send back is 'spyware' in the sense that they want to know more about you and then sell it or use it to sell other stuff to you. But I don't have proof. :)

"The lack of opt-out is annoying"

No, the lack of opt-out is suspect, and in this context the claimed "need for telemetry" is plain intelligence-insulting! What really is sought in this sadistic game from their part is the option of having greater power/control over the devices installed with their product. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt about that!

They need all that information for things like Cortana to do it's magic. For those of us that don't need or want Cortana (or Siri or OK Google) on the desktop, they shouldn't need my data. Telemetry after a crash or with regards to OS function usage seems OK to me, but I don't want my calendar, phone book, or email sent to the cloud for analysis.

I don't see how small medical offices can use Windows anymore (big ones will use Enterprise Windows and shut all that stuff off). If the calendar and email are being sent to the cloud, then that sounds like a potential HIPAA violation.

I don't understand why consumers can't easily disable all data sharing with Microsoft. I don't think Apple is as bad and now I'm thinking about buying my first Mac in a long time and running a VM for the few Windows applications I absolutely need.

I recommend that you read this: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...

That's pretty comprehensive. Thanks!

I only have access to Windows 10 Pro and would like to turn off all personalization options. All I want my operating system to do is support the applications I want to run.

I've found some of the Powershell scripts that do things like uninstall the XBox music app (or whatever it's called), but after an update it just reappears. It's very frustrating.

So I don't think the data they send back is 'spyware' in the sense that they want to know more about you and then sell it or use it to sell other stuff to you.

Unfortunately, given that the other sting in Windows 10 is automatic, compulsory updates, even if your hypothesis is true today there is no guarantee it will remain true tomorrow.

I'm a little sad about the whole Windows 10 situation, really. From the more credible commentary I've read now that the dust has settled, it seems like a reasonable OS under the hood. It also seems like with enough effort you could mitigate or work around the worst of what is there, maybe even in some of the non-Enterprise versions.

However, those privacy and control issues are complete deal-breakers for me. Recent behaviour by Microsoft has abused the Windows update mechanism for earlier versions that I do use, and it has also included a disturbing number of outright broken updates. Unlike a surprising number of professional reviewers, I am therefore not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt any longer. If I can't turn things off reliably on my own computer if I don't want them to happen, and I can't trust that questionable things will be opt-in instead of opt-out, then unfortunately none of the rest matters very much for either my own personal or my businesses' professional purchasing decisions.

>> If I can't turn things off reliably on my own computer if I don't want them to happen, and I can't trust that questionable things will be opt-in instead of opt-out

It seems to me MS is simply going to the "let us take care of your system, we know what's best for you" approach - which is not only insulting, but highly suspect.

When you make using an OS compulsory on several fronts (many of which I can't control), I really have to ask myself if I should try making a move to a more open, more secure OS.

Yea, I think it is called "Windows as a service".

In the case of updates, I wouldn't mind so much if they had them on-by-default for security and stability updates, because that will usually be the best choice for users who don't know any better. However, preventing power users and small businesses from controlling their own systems even if they want to is quite a different thing, and of course it makes a difference only if Microsoft want you to have something that you actively do not want.

Yea, they have offered at least the option to enable auto updates during OOBE since XP SP2. I agree that Win10 style forced updates has its own issues, especially when they include even third party driver updates in there (to name just one of them). I think it is part of the "Windows as a service" vision.

I think it is part of the "Windows as a service" vision.

I've no doubt you're right. Unfortunately, if there is one thing in computing that really shouldn't be some sort of super-connected, ever-changing, as-a-service rubbish, it's the basic OS your whole machine runs on. This direction was inevitable the moment they appointed Nadella CEO, but I've always maintained it was another case of Microsoft trying to jump on the bandwagon long after other big players and then misjudging when it did.

I suspect a lot of people are going to watch with something of an open mind until the year after launch when the deadline for a free update to Win10 expires, and then there are probably going to be some hard questions asked about adoption levels and revenue streams and why so many businesses and home users are still on 7/8, and then Nadella is going to decide to spend more time with his family and be replaced by someone who pushes Microsoft firmly back towards its traditional and probably much more successful roots in 2-3 years before Win7 support runs out and forces some really serious questions to be asked by Microsoft's core customer base.

I think Terry is more to blame. Of course, there is also the problem of making money on Windows too, especially as most of the Windows sales are OEM. I am thinking of breaking up Microsoft's Windows division into a non-profit foundation, funded by hardware vendors like Dell and Intel with no per system licensing fees required anymore for example. Of course, it would be complex and have to be planned carefully.

I think Terry is more to blame.

Perhaps, but I think if you're the CEO and the flagship product most associated with your business goes to hell, the buck stops with you.

Ironically, someone like Terry might be best placed to clean up the mess, as a shift back towards in-house but centralised technologies like Exchange (a team he ran for a long time) could be Microsoft's best strategy for competing both technically and in PR with the online-everything brigade.

What makes you feel that Windows 10 is any more of a "spyware OS" than Google Android?

The fact that there's a big old checkbox next to "Help improve your Android experience by automatically sending diagnostic and usage data to Google" is a great start.

And you think that's the only checkbox which controls info. being sent to google......

What about google now?

So the debate is whether it may or may not be as bad as one of the worst alternatives. That it is even comparable is damning enough.

Nope the debate is whether it's worse than other widely used alternatives.

If all mainstream OS' are doing a specific thing (gathering information about users to fuel certain features), why should MS face particular approbrium for doing the same?

I'm still rather happy with 7, and I don't think I'll make a switch. If only they would stop pestering me to update...

It's stipulated that 7 will be the new XP, and 2015 may be the first year to start XP-ization of 7.

I'm on 7 Ultimate and updated a while back only to find out my year old video card wasn't compatible so I couldn't run dual monitors and went back to 7.

No worries though, they're shipping all the invasive spyware in coming 7 and 8 updates anyways so we'll both be assimilated soon enough.

They were always big on doing "brilliant" things for developers, at least since my career started (around 2006). I went to a few Microsoft developer events and it was really obvious that they cared a lot about developer experience. End-user experience, on the other hand, was "less brilliant".

I agree with all the examples mentioned in this article, but I think the beginning of 2014 was the year public opinion started to change. Nadella came out of the gate strong in early 2014. Just before that, Mike Krahulik's post about the Surface Pro 2 at the end of 2013 was a turning point for the perception of the product by people who prefer iOS/Android/Linux. (http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/10/28/surface-pro...)

Public opinion changes when mainstream entities (people/organizations) validate something new. Microsoft has been coming out with good stuff for several years now, but that opinion has been restricted to a subset of technophiles. If in 2014 you told someone about tablets and styluses, you'd either get a dumb look or the standard Jobs like ("you're doing in wrong")

So what happened in 2015? Well, Apple validated (copied) Microsoft's work. Today you can tell someone about a tablet stylus or keyboard cover and they'll enthusiastically agree it's good, because did you hear? The iPad has it.

We all remember this, right? http://www.cultofmac.com/388350/ipad-pro-comic/

Sums it up fairly well.

Related: http://i.imgur.com/YBBa3dW.jpg

Edit: Ninja'd.

What you're basically describing in your comment is the concept of "cultural hegemony" [0] popularized by Gramsci in Marxist philosophy but superimposed on tech context.

Apple clearly acting as the bourgeoisie of the today's tech world where Microsoft is relegated to the proletarian rank and file and because of that Apple somewhat gets to dictate what are the accepted social and cultural norms in the tech world and we the proletariat have to just comply with their edicts or face some form of "tech ostracism".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

It makes sense that this was noticed long ago, although personally I cribbed it from Krugman's "VSPs".

It's easy to noticed in everyday life though. Most people don't have the time/energy/incentive/desire/background knowledge/etc to form independent opinions, so they pick up the opinions of people who speak to their identity. If you see yourself (and want to be seen as) a "creative type with good taste", you'll just read DaringFireball and repeat whatever Gruber says. If you want to be "principled, anti-establishment", you'll crib Stallman, etc, etc.

There has been lots of pencils for iPads for years -- and keyboards in the cover (3rd party). And then we have Newton.

The thing is -- when Apple adds a feature, you know it will work well. If Apple can't make it work well, it won't be added.

So by now everyone knows that if Apple do something, it is good. The copies might be good -- but mostly a few years later, when they had time to do a carbon copy...

(That said, I'll probably go Android for my next phone/pad, so I can get music on them without iTunes. I only have Linux at home these days. But I'm still hoping for Jolla/Ubuntu.)

For me it was about 2012.

Herb Sutter (at MS) wrote his famous "Welcome to the jungle" article (http://herbsutter.com/welcome-to-the-jungle).

It seemed if anyone was adapting, their platform, development tools, and languages to match the revolution in hardware, it was MS.

(Given this revolution, on the language side MS changed focus from managed languages to the previously neglected native C++)

> It seemed if anyone was adapting, their platform, development tools, and languages to match the revolution in hardware, it was MS.

C#'s async/await certainly the most accessible way of doing asynchronous operations in any mainstream language. The same for PLINQ and (simple) parallelism.

Clojure, a language that supposedly has concurrency as a main focus, is awkward and arcane in comparison.

As I understand it some things managed languages have against them;

The garbage collector. Even lock free garbage collectors require some synchronization. That doesn't scale well to many cores.

Another things is that low level memory layout and alignment matters for users, to avoid false sharing etc. In managed languages you end up fighting a system that tries to hide low level things like this from you.

Finally managed languages have ref semantic and therefore use a lot of pointers under the hood. However the data layout that is the cache friendliest is contiguous memory, so the core can predict and pre fetch the next values into cache. A core that has to chase down pointers all over the memory address get a lot of cache misses.

Benefit of the doubt is nice, but delivery has been poor to nonexistent.

Microsoft is barely taking back its own declining market of non-phones -- while making a wild bet on augmented reality.

I feel like the media wants to paint a comeback story a la Apple a lot more than one actually exists.

My observation as well. Bought a Surface Book earlier this year and it was crashy as hell. Took it back to the store. Good luck competing with Apple in the premium segment with this level of QA.

Same here with a Surface Pro 4. Lots of little bugs that I'd never expect in an Apple device. Weird keyboard issues, random screen shutoff, DPI issues, etc. Luckily, Windows Updates have been fixing the issues a handful at a time, but this means that initial impressions will suffer. Hopefully they get their QA issues sorted out.

Hopefully not.

Why not? A strong premium hardware manufacturer is needed pretty badly right now in the PC industry. The last one standing is Lenovo, and most of its product line is shameful garbage. When manufacturers compete on merit, everyone wins.

That may be true, but there is clearly an argument against that premium manifacturer being the already giant corporation that licenses the os run on 95% of those machines. If it were startup I'd say 'more power to them', even if they only shipped machines with windows preinstalled.

You've got a point there, but I don't see this as a huge deal if they don't begin to abuse their position. Which they might, but I'll reserve my judgement until there's something to judge.

Fair enough, I don't judge the Surface machines as something bad per se, I simply don't pine for a world were the only decent hardware to run Windows is made by MS (which the too often abysmal quality of other OEMs may lead us to). Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, I guess.

FWIW, I would argue something similar wrt the Apple tv: abusive practices or not, I would not be happy to see one of the world's wealthiest corporation become a key player in yet another market (if anything because of Apple's sketchy history wrt to open formats).

Strong premium hardware makers would be nice, but not if they're Microsoft, because their hardware is necessarily tied to their crappy keylogger-infested OS.

And how exactly would other manufacturers compete with MS hardware anyway, while still offering MS's software on them? They'd be doomed to failure since MS can just jack up the price of Windows for them, so you'd be stuck with a single HW/SW maker, and back to a PC monopoly or something pretty close to it (since so much business software still requires Windows).

If you want healthy competition for PC hardware, it's never going to happen if MS takes over that space. Of course, it seems to be going downhill anyway, so I'm not sure what the solution is, but between the hardware makers throwing in the towel or crappifying their products, Windows becoming worse than ever with Metro and spyware and reported incompatibility with existing software, and lack of inroads for Linux into the OS space to provide some real competition (partly because of application compatibility, and partly because of too much fragmentation esp. for desktop environments; thanks a lot Gnome team), things are not looking good.

Dell has some premium, business-class laptops.

>I feel like the media wants to paint a comeback story a la Apple a lot more than one actually exists.

In terms of an Apple come back story that's blatantly false. Microsoft was never in dire financial straights since practically the mid-80's.

The Benefit of the Doubt is more because of their attitude to the OSS community. For nearly its entire life Micro$oft has been seen as the prime enemy of the OSS community, a role which it willingly and almost happily embraced.

Today Microsoft has open sources it main .NET runtime. Opening up C#/F# 2 great languages. Its opening the JS Engine in Edge. Compared to Gates/Balmer area Microsoft it very much feels like a different company.

I would not happily return to them. In fact, I see no reason why. To me, they are still in their same embrace, extend, extinguish mode only that now their cycle is a lot longer. It could even be that nadella really thinks that he will always be in the embrace and extend phase. My gut feeling is that as soon as it becomes hugely beneficial to them somebody within the company will advocate for the extinguish phase. Don't trust Microsoft. It is in their DNA to screw you.

"The guest who has escaped from the roof, will think twice before he returns by the door." - Gandalf, to Saruman.

"Don't trust Microsoft. It is in their DNA to screw you."

Companies don't have a DNA. Humans do. Companies change as employees come and go, as the environment changes, etc. Don't antropomorphize them.

Companies act in their financial interest. Very rarely not, but mostly yes. I don't know why is it so hard to accept that.

> Companies don't have a DNA

What then is this "company culture" I hear about all time on HN? Also, what percentage of employees have changed at Microsoft since the "old" Microsoft - 60, 75, 90%?

If companies don't have DNA/culture/behavioral momentum and can change at the drop of a pin, it implies all the work that has been done can be undone by Nadella's successor in short order.

Microsoft actions were ambivalent in 2015.

On the one side the open sourced quite a few code bases, though very strategic ones but non of the high profile old cash cows. Azure is doing well.

On the other site, XBoxOne and WinPhone10 had a lack luster sales far behind their competitors (half of PS4 sales; less than 3% of mobile market). Win10's inbuilt privacy issues aren't funny - a showstopper and it will hurts their reputation. Fix that in 2016! http://www.ibtimes.com/ps4-vs-xbox-one-sony-has-sold-302-mil... and http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp

I would agree that they've made some great moves to stay relevant. I was one of those sold on the promise of the Surface Book hardware, my daughter opted for a Surface Pro 4. Mostly around the drawing experience but also the continued ability to carry around your own media rather than having to be tethered to the Internet for everything. It would be an interesting exercise if Microsoft opened up everything you needed to know to put Linux on the hardware. Not sure they are comfortable doing that yet.

Operating systems and "phoning home" and the whole privacy thing is an interesting battlefield. I could never imagine Microsoft standing up to the Department of Justice like Tim Cook has. I also can't imagine Apple making iOS available on anyone's hardware but their own. So that leaves making the hardware available for someone else's OS.

I suspect there is a small market for a phone tether solution which suppresses all of the privacy leaking information from the network stream. Perhaps the Silent Circle folks will consider that a feature in a future release. But for now its really hard to plug that leak. So many apps on iOS, Windows, or Android leak stuff left and right. Whether its maps, or Waze, or location based games, or the Uber client to tell Uber where you are to get picked up. No to mention IMSI catchers and just general phone company douchebaggery like injecting an ID on every http request. I don't think that battle is lost, only that the depth of it is immense and any one player is probably not going to swing it one way or another.

From a company perspective though I think Microsoft has made some very positive steps and I hope the market rewards them for that.

Microsoft's 2015 reminds me of Sun's 2004 - open sourcing software in a desperate attempt to remain relevant as Linux grows. In truth Microsoft hasn't open sourced Office, Windows, SQL Server etc. which they make money from, but only bits which they think might save them from irrelevance amongst developers in the era of Linux and the cloud. As much as MS made a song and dance about open source the vast majority of MS profits are still from proprietary software.

Do you honestly expect them to open source software that earns them significant revenue? They are a business trying to make money.

I don't, and neither does anyone else. The point is that they remain a proprietary software company at their core and will likely remain that way.

Oh I misinterpreted your comment. I see your point.

None of the megacompanies open-source their cash cows. Red Hat is an exception to some extent, but they're not that big.

Google, Apple, Microsoft -- they all make money based on closed-source software. What they open-source is only the stuff that does not give them competitive edge. You can't download the source Google Search, iOS or Windows.

(I'm not arguing with you, btw.)

I wouldn't be surprised if Windows was open source in 10-20 years. I'm not expecting it to, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't open sourced, either.

Probably not going to happen. Windows includes code sourced from too many other companies.....

I don't think their open sourcing is some kind of desperate attempt. They open sourced .NET understanding that developer tools and languages have to be open source nowadays, if they want adoption.

Without adoption it's hard to stay relevant which was what my post was about...

Without developers Microsoft tools and platform will shrink a lot and fast. It was basically their only chance to open source the new dotNet core. And try everything incl. their TypeScript tactics on JavaScript to get developers back into their development tool eco system - and to lock-in them into their tool-sets and platforms.

Most devs beside enterprise IT departments use open source languages for web deveopment. NodeJS/Java/PHP/Ruby/Python/Go are very popular and only a tiny fraction (11%) runs on Windows servers with dotNet or Mono. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2015/11/16/november-2015-w...

Hows that compiled though? Most iis installisations don't send idenditifying information.

I know if you nmap our website which uses iis it returns as something else because of our load balancer.

Yes they're both companies, but Sun open sourced stuff to get you to buy it on Solaris, their traditional cash cow.

Microsoft promotes stuff like Visual Studio Code and Chakra not to sell Windows - their stand at Node Interactive earlier this month had a 50 inch TV running Ubuntu. Instead, they realise you don't necessarily want Windows, and are happy to sell you Azure (which runs Linux VMs and is a pretty good product).

Azure is their cloud OS and runs on a special Windows server cluster in huge datacenters. (One can run Linux VMs on it, but that's just a byproduct) Azure and software as a service are their mid term future plans. Not for a reason Dave Cutler (73 years old!!), VMS and WinNT fame/chief architect has worked on Windows Azure and Hyper-V since 2008. He is undoubtly Microsoft's oldest and most important person - without him Windows (NT series, XBox, Azure) wouldn't exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler

Everything you've written in your comment is true, but I don't think it responds to anything I've said: it just looks like you're trying to show off your knowledge of NT.

No, it was (an extensive) answer to your comment. Azure is their mid term plan for the future. It's their cloud OS. Software as a service, pay per months/annual is their business model to grow. As long as you run your Linux on their Azure they are happy to have you on board. Though, running other OS as guest OS on HyperV is just a by-product of the capabilities of the Azure cloud.

Both in the case of Office 365 and that of Azure they are selling you their cashcow (office and windows), only in a software as service fashion. Moreover, neither is opensource, unlike cloud offering based on Xen or kvm, which are (at least to some extent). I fail to see how Sun fares worse in this comparison, if this was your point.

Cutler has been in Xbox for a couple of years now.

One thing that struck me about this article is that they said that if the Surface Book had been introduced by Samsung no one would have paid attention. Intuitively this seems correct, but I wonder what exactly Samsung has done to be thought of so little. I used to have the first Galaxy Note. In the era of the iPhone 4s, it was a cool phone.

Samsung has the ability to create amazing hardware. What could Samsung do to make itself interesting to a technically sophisticated audience?

The Surface Book had an interesting narrative not only because of the hardware, but also the ironic underdog story of Microsoft vs Apple. Nevertheless Samsung gets plenty of coverage and discussion over new Galaxy S and Galaxy Note products and I bet they too would cause a stir if they launched a product like the Surface Book. Too bad they left the PC industry...

IMO: stop trying to break into the software world. I tend to like Samsung's hardware, but all the software they put on things really turns me off.

The problem with Microsoft hasn't been that they've never been able to inspire excitement with a product (remember currier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier, or Kinect) but rather their execution on those products.

Only half of Apple's genius is their design, the other half is their incredible execution machine, in large part thanks to the work that Tim Cook did. Microsoft used to have an incredible execution machine, with mediocre design. Now they are struggling with both.

Microsoft has gotten a lot better in design, particularly in the hardware space, but the questions is:

Does Microsoft have the needed DNA to align their incredible resources/brain power around a small set of products that will really make a difference for them?

Despite hololens and the surface products, this remains very unproven for me.

While I don't think Steve Jobs necessarily deserves the near-deification he's received posthumously, I do think that Apple benefited from having someone who was able and willing to push through particular design decisions no matter how difficult they were to achieve or whether they stepped on senior people's toes. I get the impression that, within Microsoft, the best interests of new and innovative products always came a distant third behind the vagaries of internal politics, and the desire of the Windows and Office teams to protect their turf.

I also think the success of their desktop monopoly in the 1990s and early 2000s caused Microsoft make the classic mistake of forgetting what business they were really in. They stopped thinking they were in the technology business, and started thinking they were in the PC business. Other devices and products like smartphones and tablets were OK, but only so long as they respected the PC's place as the centre of the computing universe. The idea that a new type of device and OS might eventually supplant the PC and Windows as the dominant consumer computing platform was heresy.

Apple's competitive advantage is certainly isn't in supply chain management , many big electronic OEM's are very capable at that.

Their advantage we're in the combination of innovation, design and marketing, and their unique market power/position which give them unique powers over collaborators and suppliers which they knew how to smartly use to build new ecosystems.

Or, when it comes to privacy the year MS stopped getting the benefit of the doubt.

Well that's nice and all, but all these years later, I still don't know how to buy a Surface in India. Buying Windows is still a royal mess (the local eCommerce stores have wildly different pricing for different variants, which is again different from the local MS store, which is different from the US store).

MS might be making cool products, but it sure as hell isn't keen on making them easy to buy.

Maybe because it will only be launched in January 2016 in India.

http://www.windowscentral.com/surface-pro-4-slated-launch-in...

Which is exactly my point. What's the point of making consumers wait that long?

2016: The year one switches to Ubuntu due to the slow, chunky over engineered mess and automatic updates of Windows that screw up workflows and interrupt video conference meetings where money is on the line.

Seems to me they got the benefit of the hype not the doubt.

I personally don't know anyone who has committed their future to the Windows Universal App platform. If developers aren't all in on a platform then that platform will never see the applications that propel it to a leadership position.

2015: the year Microsoft built Windows completely around law enforcement's wishlist.

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/recently-bought-a-window...

You can use the most encrypted and anonymous apps you want, but if Microsoft can silently send you updates to your OS, can see what you're typing and send it to its servers (to "improve your experience", of course), and gives the US government access to its discovered zero-days months before it starts fixing them, then it's all kind of pointless.

My recollection might be failing me. But I do not remember the level of excitement described in the article for the Original iPhone. I remember it for the next iPhone (3G/2), but not the initial.

Remember the tablets, how they were supposed to be "the next big thing"? Remember who was pushing them? That's right - it was Bill Gates. Long before Steve Jobs. Except their product sucked big time because it was built on Windows XP and you had to use a pen with it. And was slow. And expensive. And marketed the wrong way.

The same will happen here. The technology and society are simply not ready yet - someone will lead us there, but it won't be Microsoft. They never were inovators, they were always just businessmen. And no, you can't change the company any more than you can change a person. Has IBM changed? (well, I hear the ties are optional now ;) Apple? Sony? Google? Facebook? Yahoo? The shades change, but the color remains the same.

(full disclosure: yes, I am biased - I had to live under torture that is known as Internet Explorer for too many years... may it rest in peace, along with all its reincarnations)

</rant>

I hope Ars Technica got paid well for this P.R. piece.

I don't see why anyone would give Microsoft the "benefit of the doubt" since they are probably the most consumer-hostile of the big tech companies (even Google is merely indifferent, not actually hostile.) The Win10 spyware, the always-on Xbone camera, the (later reversed) decision to ban used games on XBone, the list goes on...

On the other hand, I trust that HoloLens will be around for a while since it is a vanity project for them and they have literally billions of dollars to burn on it. Similar to Google Glass and Facebook's virtual reality thing that they acquired.

They already had a lot of cred with me because of their research, which is publicly available at research.microsoft.com. Contrast this with, say, Apple, which created some open source projects, but not much more.

Apple is more of a forker/adopter of open source projects rather than a creator. It's not better or worse: just an observation on a number of their open source projects.

Meanwhile, I've had more "holy crap get me away from Microsoft!" linux installs this year than any other before.

Calculate Linux KDE and Linux Mint Debian Edition are the installs of choice, btw. :)

> introduced a new approach to delivering and updating the operating system

It's not a new idea at all. Rolling release linux distros have been doing that for a long time.

It's an unsettling feeling with Microsoft ever since the rise of mobile devices and cloud based systems. Nonetheless the company deserves a lot of respect for setting the foundation of a lot of under the hood tech it has paved the way with.

Microsoft can't monetise in multiple ways from singular products the way other companies can nowdays. I think most general users use mocrosofts core products as a platform to connect with other companies to monetise. The push with win10 to connect with the Microsoft store was a good move IMO.

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