Comment by metaphor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by metaphor | Hacker News Reader

There's a sense of irony seeing this post today when just last night, as my girlfriend and I were planning a weekend trip, I asked her what OS she was using (not being familiar with anything beyond Win7), to which she responded Win8. I then asked if she planned to upgrade to Win10, noting a post I had read about MS charging for the upgrade after a certain date, to which she responded no...then a minute or two later, poof, Win10 auto-update starts...literally in the middle of a reservation transaction. She swears she never explicitly consented to the upgrade.

It's one thing to read about and discuss the issues with Microsoft's overt push to migrate the world to Win10. It's admittedly a completely different experience to see it happen right before your eyes. Some time ago, I half-committed to never owning another computer with a Microsoft OS beyond Win7, reasoning that you just never know if a useful tool may pop up that's only available for Windows. After last night's surprise, that commitment became unwavering.

There was a user action to install it, but it's pretty sneaky. MS changed the behavior of the upgrade question dialog that if you close it with x it will start the download and then install when ready. Your girlfriend must have clicked the x some time prior to the sudden upgrade.

Even my tech-savvy coworker who didn't want to upgrade got caught out by this. Anyway, you can still roll back, and then install never10.

Edit: After some thinking: Yes, i agree this is a dark pattern and MS needs to be held accountable to it accordingly. My only disagreement with the current direction of discourse is that people are not saying "MS manipulated me into an update", which is the truth, but "Windows updated on its own and there was nothing anyone could do", which isn't.

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They didn't change it, it was always that way. People only realized just now that it does that.

Also, please do take a look at the window people X out of and then are surprised about: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png It states clearly that it is going to happen, and when it is going happen, and how to cancel it. The only way a user would be surprised about that is if they didn't read the message in the first place.

If people could read we'd live in a completely different world, run by people elected by voters because it was in their best interests; where no one clicked a EULA, because the contents of them are insane; and no one bought the extended warranty.

Surely you're joking? "Click here to change your upgrade schedule" is in such tiny font of course no one will see it.

If Microsoft cared about its users, that option would be way bigger than it is.

Edit: They purposely put in all that information because they know people won't want to read through all that. That dialog is purposely designed to trick users because they've been taught that if they want to cancel, hit the "X" button, not find the tiny link to change the scheduling of this thing you don't understand.

It is in the normal font size for that system, compare it with the window title. The "this is recommended" and the date are the only enlarged bits in that window.

> all that

I don't know about you, but to me and most anyone i know the amount of text in that window is miniscule. Difference in perspective i guess.

As for what users are taught to: What i and everyone else i know have been taught to is "Read everything the computer prints on the screen unless you know exactly what it is."

if you were designing that dialog box to actually let users control whether or not they could upgrade to win 10 and made sure they made the right choice, is that how you would have designed the dialog box? again the dialog box microsoft designed was not to help out the users. it was to trick them into upgrading win 10.

the dialog is purposely built to trick users into clicking on the X, something users have been taught to do and what has always by default been, "cancel, don't do whatever this dialog box tried asking you to do."

also, when is the last time you saw a dialog box with that much text? which dialog boxes have you been reading exactly? even so, it's not as though the amount of text telling the user absolves them from their dark design patterns to trick users. microsoft did the bare minimum to let users know and changed the way the ui works by having the close button _agree_ to the changes rather than canceling them.

You have a good point.

And to be fair, the misreporting and misrepresentation of the reality in the discourse about windows upgrades caused my pendulum to swing too far in the other direction.

MS is engaging in dark patterns, and that is what needs to be stated clearly, and directly, not the sensationalist, and wrong "windows updated automatically and there was nothing i could do".

> having the close button _agree_ to the changes rather than canceling them.

See that kind of thing is wrong. No such thing happens, period. The window tells you that at the date a change was scheduled, and gives you the options of "change", "cancel", "do now" or "dismiss the information". Closing it does not agree to anything, the agreement was taken implicitly before the window even opened. You're opted in, and given an option to opt out. And that is the dark pattern here.

> You're opted in, and given an option to opt out. And that is the dark pattern here.

Bingo, nailed it.

Just came across how you get "signed up" for the upgrade - see the main screenshot here:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3078663/windows/microsoft-den...

That's definitely a textbook case of a dark pattern.

I believe the screenshot is what you get when you did not cancel the scheduled upgrade and the process starts in earnest.

Note the very nice video in there.

Charitably, Microsoft learned from Windows 95 and Windows NT that if you expect users to upgrade on their own they won't do it. So now they are forcing the issue, albeit with bad execution.

Really? I don't see a lot of people running Windows 95 or Windows NT.

The lesson Microsoft should have learned is that if they come out with a genuinely-improved version of Windows, the user base will adopt it in good time without being herded like sheep.

My father told me a computer that I built for one of his customers running windows 95 almost 20 years ago is still running and being used daily.

I don't think they would like windows 10. :p

That computer is probably pretty secure, too, because sometimes security by obscurity really does work.

That doesn't apply here. Obscurity and obsolescence are different. It's a totally normal 486. Nothing weird about it.

How many dumb windows pop up all the time that you close out without really considering? I'm constantly getting "Apple Software Update", "Java needs updating", "Adobe creative cloud needs updating" and about 4000 other irritating update windows. Nobody carefully reads those because nobody has time for that many distractions.

Intel wants to manage your wifi connection. The network drive was disconnected (no shit, I just woke up the machine!).

'll most likely be downvoted for this, but whilst I sympathise with the plight of those being auto upgraded at inconvenience a small part of me thinks that those users who cannot be bothered to read the important OS information notices, are the ones who may need the upgrade the most.

As parent (+1'ed) notes, the message itself is quite clear in its intent. I would not for a second think that closing the window would infer the "cancel path" as the result.

Yes, they are being too forceful, and Microsoft ought to have given users a clear "I do not want to upgrade, ever" option, yet at the same time Windows 10 represents a significant increase in security, and in these days of massive botnets and what not that is a good thing on a big scale. In a roundabout way, I'm picturing this as forced immunisation for the greater good.

I'm on the edge about agreeing that this is a good thing, but you're right. Due to the long history of people ignoring updates and then blaming MS for when they get hit by the latest 0-day, parts of MS are probably feeling very antagonistic against some of their users at this point.

Win 10 is not a security update.

Microsoft is committed to security updates on Win 8.1 until 2023.

Feeling antagonistic also often results in irrational actions.

Yet Windows 10 contains significant improvements to the security model:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/...

> Windows 10 represents a significant increase in security

Is that really so? It seems that last 20 years Microsoft just plays whack-a-mole game closing endless vulnerabilities instead of designing a better architecture that would not allow such things.

For example in Windows any app has full access to a device. The user can run any app written by anyone just by clicking a link on a web page or mail message. In Android these problems are partially fixed and in iOS the user is unable to run malicious applications at all.

I have no idea whether you're being sarcastic or earnest, but the post is funny either way. Describing "the user has a high amount of control over their own personal machine" as a problem is new. :)

No, I was not sarcastic. Many users are happy with being unable to run unsigned apps or listen to pirated music if it makes their devices secure.

I agree with that on the principle that it's a nice thing to have if it's optional. And amazingly enough, Windows 10 actually does have that: http://i.imgur.com/XV4Hpwd.png

It depends on how this is implemented. Is it enforced on a kernel level? What if some application, like browser or email client still allows starting an unsigned .exe file? Is Windows Store protected from publishing malware? Is there real privilege and access separation for different apps?

While security is a good goal, surely you can agree that they could have (and should have) rolled any major security updates into a small, free OS update for that purpose alone? They didn’t have to simultaneously revamp the entire UI, replace default programs with less-useful versions, etc.

True, I don't understand Windows enough to know whether all the changes in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/... could have been easily / practically done as a service pack* though.

Edit: *Especially for Windows 7.

Ah yes, the ol' "blame the user" technique!

The user did not request an upgrade. Microsoft uses dark patterns because in fact it is only Microsoft who needs upgrades to protect their future profits.

> The only way a user would be surprised about that is if they didn't read the message in the first place.

Users don't read anything. They take whatever action is the quickest way to get rid of the dialog box they aren't interested in so they can do what they actually wanted to do with the computer.

Thank you for reading the whole comment. :D

This is what a simple and honest upgrade message might look like:

“A major system update is available for your computer; for more information on Windows 10, please go [here]. IMPORTANT: In addition to changing Windows, this update could also require you to find and install updates for other programs on your computer.

What would you like to do?

[Upgrade Now] [Upgrade Later] [Do Not Upgrade]”

No marketing-speak, no crap about how many other people have been affected by the virus-er I mean upgraded, all they needed was to be straightforward with users. Why was that so hard for Microsoft to do?

As someone who held onto Win2k until it hurt, I still thought it might be a good deal back then when they offered the free upgrade from 7 to 10. I thought: I'll just wait until the last moment so I can see what kind of bugs come up. While upgrading one of my laptops to 10 to play around with it and be prepared (which was a horrible experience on it's own).

Now with the moment coming closer and seeing what they do there, I'm pretty sure I'll play the win2k game one more time with my win7 and see what comes up next. Even if I'd have to pay for it.

I just run win7 in a VM on Linux.

1. Backup your Windows 7 install

2. Upgrade to Windows 10 (this associates your machine with a permanent license)

3. Restore your backup

If/when time comes to actually upgrade, you should be able to do so (or install from scratch) using the license you acquired in step 2.

I thought Nadella would bring an ending to such hamfisted, Ballmeresque/Gatesian approaches what with him supporting such open projects lately. This is sad.

I don't think this debacle can be blamed on Ballmer, and certainly not on Gates.

In fact, I have to wonder if the reason why Ballmer was finally handed his walking papers by the board was that he was unwilling to greenlight these frog-marched upgrades to Windows 10.

Somebody very powerful at Microsoft, or perhaps elsewhere, wants everybody to accept this free update way, way too badly, and it's not clear why.

They're getting their asses handed to them by malware. They have a huge attack surface of users on various versions of Windows. Forced upgrades reduces that attack surface of older versions of Windows.

That's all I can think of. In open source software where this is more transparent, computer security is hard. Backporting fixes is harder, and expensive, and has its own risks. Microsoft can't be immune to the same problem.

I don't believe a single second that Microsoft is adopting this hard line for security considerations. They want to monetize their users. They want them to watch their in-OS ads, they want to accumulate data on people, they want them to go to bing for search, etc.

I think the most important one here is the Windows Store.

I forgot it and completely agree, they want a cut of anything installed on the machine. And following this logic I wouldn't be surprised if they would make it increasingly difficult to install any non store app. Requiring them to be signed first, then signed by them against a fee, then simply not allowed like iOS does.

Which is why not having the option to turn down upgrade after having been upgraded to windows 10 is problematic.

They did do something similar with Windows RT, but that was completely locked down with no existing Win32 app base to worry about. And yes, they do have uninstall I think with 30 days before files are deleted.

They are already doing it with drivers. Windows 10 will only load Microsoft signed drivers and Windows Server 2016 will only load WHQL signed drivers for which you have to pay a fee.

But the CA makes most of the money not Microsoft though.

It's mostly about Windows Phone, which needs apps, which means the store needs users. If it gets users then people will bother to develop cross phone/desktop apps. Of course no one uses the store still, even as Microsoft tries to force/trick you into logging in with a Microsoft ID.

They're rushing to copy all the things I dislike about Apple. They're also rushing to emulate the things I hate about Google and Facebook. Meanwhile they are doing little to fix what I don't like about Microsoft, nor are they copying many of the good things.

In Zero to One there is an excellent chapter about the dark side of competition and how it makes you cargo cult your competitors instead of thinking creatively. This is an example.

Don't compete. Innovate and focus on the user and the problem domain, not the others. Otherwise you just become an inferior copy.

Windows 10 Spyware Edition is a misstep like Google Plus.

I think it is the matter of the size of the market, particularly in the long run.

Agreed. [1]

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3135657

Exactly. If Microsoft cared about user security, they've had the last three decades to do something about it. This is all about monetization and tracking.

Yea, WinSE does cost money too and I think I saw a mention that it is considered a cost center.

They can address security issues (as they always have) without forcing an OS upgrade.

The low-level 'attack surface' is mostly unchanged. Windows 10 is not a total rewrite of Windows Vista/7/8, or anything close to it. As proof of this assertion, you'll note that most security patches that apply to Windows 10 will correspond to equivalent patches for earlier versions.

Bill is back, and he is a major force behind Nadella, Nadella is just a marionette. Yes, Microsoft used to be a better citizen when Ballmer was in charge.

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