Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

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> Microsoft needs to make Windows Update better.

Microsoft especially needs to do two things:

1) respect the DHCP settings that tethered devices provide (Android provides option 43/ANDROID_METERED) and NOT suck every data plan dry when on the road (maybe would be worth to expose an API to applications "the primary internet connection is metered, do not suck dry", given how huge any kind of update is these day)

2) give users the fucking option to only subscribe for security updates and not for the latest "feature" set. I know many people who disabled Windows 7 auto-updates after every other month MS would re-enable the W10 update nagware screen. This is way beyond hostile behavior, not even Apple goes this low. I went Apple once Win8 was coming out, definitely not going back until MS either gets a grip or makes W10 LTSB (the one on a "stable" track e.g. for embedded devices, without nagware, ads or other bullshit) available for general sale.

oh, and 3) provide a Windows 7 Service Pack 3 and installation media with all the updates preinstalled. Having to either upgrade by hand or mess around with ISOs is not exactly customer friendly.

> not even Apple goes this low.

Apple goes just as low, OS X asks me every day to update to High Sierra and the option is only "Later" and it can't be swiped away quickly like a normal notification.

I ran an iPhone 4 for until the iPhone 7 launch, I used to keep it on iOS7 because after iOS4 rendered my 3G unusable I knew to no longer update. Every single morning it would ask me to update, which I had to carefully dismiss. It would always download the update filling up my phone to the brim which I would have to then manually delete. If my phone was full it would give me another option offering to temporarily delete apps (Which it claimed would have data restored from iCloud but I knew they would not).

My Mothers iPad auto-updated locking her out of her painting app (Brushes, as used by David Hockney), I had to use a dodgy 3rd party app to extract her documents or they'd be lost for good.

At least Microsoft gives you options to downgrade and supports old OSes, unlike Apple who stops handing out the encryption keys.

Stock iPhone 4 does not support anything newer than iOS 7 - what morning updates are you talking about?

Sorry I meant 4S, which supports up to OS 9.

I notice a lot of Apple users who update devices and OS religiously get defensive as if this stuff doesn't happen. I encourage them to try to live behind updates for once and see how bad the user experience can get.

They follow their traditional policy. A huge part of Apple's income comes from hardware. They will use every method to convince you to continue the vicious upgrade circle, whether you care about new features or not.

A customer that is satisfied with their current setup is a lost customer. So Apple's only hope is to make sure the battery is as difficult to replace as possible - because this component is sure to fail sooner or later.

You're talking about every other phone manufacturer except Apple. Once you buy an Android phone, the company has no reason to support you with security updates or OS updates. They have no reason to believe that you will buy another phone from then two years later.

Apple on the other hand still makes money off of customers -- app sells, services, music, media, etc.

> A customer that is satisfied with their current setup is a lost customer.

A satisfied customer is a customer who will eventually come back (want something new, lost or damaged device, or just general wear and tear). A dissatisfied customer will look elsewhere.

But this satisfied customer probably wouldn't buy every iteration of the iPhone. I guess that's what the parent was aiming at.

Re:2, I've never had a mac reboot on me without my explicit decision to do so. Contrast with the countless times Windows has fucked me over.

Scenario: hook up laptop to projector etc, make sure everything works. Step out for 30 minutes to chat with people coming to see your presentation. Come back, just to realize Windows did the good old "say Uncle in 5 minutes, or I'll start installing updates" thing.

I run an app called Don't Sleep to stop this exact scenario. Auto-updates is one thing, rebooting the computer (and killing everything running) when you are running a long-running experiment is the inverse of peak happiness.

The app just lies in the background, does nothing else than this. Suspend/hibernate works as it should, it just stops auto-reboots.

I wonder how Microsoft employees react whenever that happens in their own meetings. Do they just laugh and forget about the issue? Do they ignore it and quickly grab another computer? Do they use undocumented settings to fix the issue?

They're running Enterprise Builds™, which actually let the users have some resemblance of control

Exactly, I was surprised that TFA brushed away the terrible handling of updates, especially of late. "Sometimes, updates will annoy you" is quite an understatement when it involves having a whole different OS being installed without your consent.

I definitely do not tell people to turn Windows Update off but I also definitely do not try to convince to turn it on because I don't want them to hold me accountable if something weird happens. That's where MS messed up, turning updates on should be a no-brainer, not a compromise. It's easy to lose trust, it's hard to regain it.

3) Include an accurate description of each update, so you can determine if it is worth installing or not.

It's rather inconvenient to use, but they do that already in a form of KB articles linked from the Windows Updates UI.

I don't call those "accurate" personally, but YMMV

"Miscellaneous security updates and bugfixes" is not useful information.

1) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/Windows.Networking....

Cool, but (for me!) this doesn't look like I could use it in any non-UWP app... and how can I specify a connection as being metered, e.g. in trains or buses where often enough there's only 200mb of data?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/4028458/windows-met...

> not even Apple goes this low

That's an interesting new standard of bad behaviour :)

There's a way to choose the business branch instead of the comsumer branch, which might delay some of the feature updates. Iirc there was an option to delay features by up to 180 days, but that doesn't actually stop the updates though.

For the enterprise editions yes, but I'm not aware of any way to do so for the "consumer" editions...

It is available on the "Pro" edition, on the control panel.

Disaggregating security patches from feature sets would vastly increase the permutations they would have to test.

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