Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions
m.bbc.com
m.bbc.com
I feel like i could reply to half the top level posts with this link:
http://blogs.windows.com/business/2015/01/30/windows-10-for-...
>January 30, 2015
> this is much more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current via Windows Update for the supported lifetime of the device – at no cost.
>We think of this as Windows as a Service
>we are introducing a new approach for business customers, which we are referring to as the Current branch for Business. By putting devices on the Current branch for Business, enterprises will be able to receive feature updates after their quality and application compatibility has been assessed in the consumer market, while continuing to receive security updates on a regular basis. This gives IT departments’ time to start validating updates in their environments the day changes are shipped broadly to consumers, or in some cases earlier, if they have users enrolled in the Windows Insider Program.
>Based on what we are hearing from customers, we expect most will take a mixed approach in how they keep their Windows 10 systems up to date. They will likely target a different pace of updates for different users and systems, depending on the specific business needs of each group.
etc.
It's Sunday and it finally got picked up. It happens. I submitted it a while back and its just when people see it.
Maybe "re-framed" for frankly lazy tech "journalists" is a more accurate summation of what occurred?
ReactOS is an attempt to build an open source version of Windows XP/7. It uses source code from WINE and it aims for better compatibility with legacy apps and drivers by developing a WinNT-like OS-Kernel: http://www.reactos.org/screenshots
Also - yes I know they are saying they will support Windows 10 for the lifetime of the device it was bought with,but I doubt it will work like this for enterprise users.
Visual Studio 2010 and the dotNet Framework work fine in WINE: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio... . VS run as early as 2003 in ReactOS: http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/wordpress/wp-con...
As ReactOS also supports the Windows graphic card driver from NVidia, AMD and Intel - it's for sure an upcoming alternative to Windows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS . Beside that more and more Indie-game-developers support Mac & Linux (PR via Humble Bundle), and beside Indie: GOG and Steam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(hardware_platfor... ) are going strong too.
If there was an real free alternative to windows where all the specialized software worked i am dead sure companies would start to use it. But at this moment there is no such alternative.
Bugs are often easy to locate and fix, if one can reproduce it. A small donation usually helps open projects.
But Microsoft and Sony will be both legally bound to help, in certain cases they could even pay for delays if their software is at fault. I would much prefer to have a showstopper bug in closed software, thank you.
Or am I missing something?
I bet 1000sek that you are not able to setup an game development studio focusing on ps4 games with only free/open software for example.
ReactOS is nothing more than (arguably pre-)alpha software. It's not possible, at this stage, to predict when and if it will ever reach sufficient stability and security. If you follow the project closely, you will realize how complex an O/S is, and how fundamentally it needs big backing (which it doesn't have) to reach maturity.
WINE is not an alternative to an O/S. Specifically, it's a layer which needs to be evaluated on a per-case (application) basis; it's not (and it's not meant to be) a universal solution (which an O/S needs to be). Of course, ideas about tweaking WINE instead of fully porting software (see Carmack) are interesting, but again, that wouldn't make it a generic replacement.
If there is a real benefit for companies, things can change fast ... see the history of UNIX and Linux. ReactOS is where Linux was in 1996.
Windows XP and 7/8/10 supports several driver models (incl. legacy) and drivers models are in user- and kernel-mode. So for most devices it's not a problem. The display driver model changed with Vista; Win2000 display driver are still supported. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Driver_Model , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Driver_Frameworks
Not to be confused with actual lifetime of the device.
Now, with windows 10, my security updates will come bundled with my unwanted OS changes. I doubt microsoft will let people opt out of unwanted cloud-based security risks or crazy interface experiments.
[this will] let Microsoft tinker more with the software to test new features and see how customers like them
you're wrong. IE/Edge has the same type of updating, and it can and ill always be opt-outable because of the enterprise.
As someone else mentioned, to support the enterprise Microsoft makes updates piecemeal and optional.
So, MS already pulled a stunt like that recently, why they would not do it again, specially if they want people to use some shiny new tech part of their 3e strategy?
Because I DIDN'T want Windows 8.1 installed, at all.
Unless you think this tutorial is useless and people invented it because they are liars too:
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-stop-automatic-forced-upgrade-fr...
But it shows that Microsoft changes things that I may or may not want. They changed the "F12" Developer Tools in a significant way, basically completely replaced it with a completely new version with its positive and negative sides. And they introduced a "Search web" Bing search search box directly on the "New Tab" page that cannot be changed or removed. It also ignores the default search provider is DDG and not Bing.
I really liked IE since v4 and used it ever since Windows 95 with IE4 shell upgrade that made Win95 look like Win98. But the new Microsoft is the same as the old one, maybe even worse given their software as a service mentality. I won't upgrade to Edge/IE12 and maybe not even to Win10. Win7 is perfectly fine until 2022. And afterwards maybe we all use Android or a Web based OS like Chromium/FirefoxOS and Microsoft screwed up their Windows to irrelevancy/legacy.
This is going to be utter and complete chaos for any organization that performs strict change management and compatibility testing. It's already hard enough to push out normal security updates for some organizations, so having to mix in feature or even kernel changes is going to be a nightmare...
http://blogs.windows.com/business/2015/01/30/windows-10-for-...
A significant proportion of 'change management' is pointless, box-ticking bureaucracy and achieves nothing. Just look at any large company's mostly semi-broken IT systems!
Critical infrastructure probably shouldn't be running on desktop Windows anyway, so it's not going to affected. At the other end of the spectrum, if Bob in Marketing's copy of Microsoft Word stops working for a day or two while Microsoft patches something - well, who cares. Hopefully the benefits from a rolling-release system will outweigh that.
Hopefully continuously-updated operating systems will encourage enterprise software vendors to avoid using undocumented/non-standard features, and we'll all be better off.
Incremental changes to the OS may only impose a small cognitive burden of adapting at any given time instead of presenting a seemingly insurmountable obstacle all at once.
Frog and a boiling pot of water.
"Darmok and Jalad... at Tanagra."
Why would such a problem only hit one user, in a place that rolls out an SOE?
You answered your own question with this line:
"There are a variety of third party applications and workarounds that can effectively re-patch explorer.exe to completely disable Modern UI and bring back the old start menu (think Start Is Back)."
Making a deploy image that doesn't try to get computers to sign in to Microsoft's cloud services and doesn't require patching or extensive training is very much a problem. We skipped 8 like we skipped Vista.
The operating system is getting to be irrelevant in my world as an author and programmer.
Except for random settings that are kick you into a Metro settings app for no apparent reason. It feels a bit like they randomly put some settings into the Metro interface and left some settings in the Desktop interface.
Before as well as after patching away the annoying parts of the "modern" UI, Windows 8.1 just feels like Windows 7 with less consistent UI and more asking for that Microsoft account I don't want to have.
I'll stop you here: Why would I use an operating system so user-hostile that it's own advocates are saying "it's ok, lots of programs are available to unfuck it!", when the previous installment is on every level technically sound and doesn't require the unfucking?
So, serious question, what do you like better about Windows 7.
No Metro crap jumping all over you. And that's why I likely will migrate over to Linux once MS stops Win7 support.
And the Desktop app itself is sort of unstable, and classic shell is also sort of unstable, the combination result in lots of crashes, specially if you are having issues while trying to play some games (example: on my machine every time I scroll the map too much in Arcanum from Troika Games, it crashes, crashes the desktop, crashes the classic shell, and the mouse stops working completely... it is really amazing, it crashes so hard I am impressed instead of frustated).
- network management in Windows 7 was usable, whereas in 8.1 it is totally fucked
- Microsoft accounts are on their way to become mandatory, as creating a regular account is not user friendly and there's a big and scary warning when you go that route; they are basically trying to resurrect Windows Live ID
- Microsoft has started to force people on using their products - I could not figure out a way to turn OneDrive off completely, or to use anything other than Bing as the search engine in their "Search Everywhere" (this also happens on Windows Phone)
- I haven't seen a "modern Windows" app that I like, they are all pieces of crap, including stuff from Microsoft; modern Skype for example is lacking crucial functionality; their app store is filled with trademark-violating malware and I've never seen such a low quality app store
- from a usability perspective Windows 8 is a failure - there's something inherently different about a PC with 21 inch monitors, keyboard and mouse, versus a tablet, yet Windows tries to unify both worlds, becoming hostile in the process - see this funny video on the subject - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYet-qf1jo
- of course, you can totally ignore the "modern Windows" side of the coin for now, except that's where Windows is headed
- I bought the standard edition, then I discovered that I needed the Pro version to get disk encryption or to connect to it through Remote Desktop; plus you need the Enterprise edition to make it boot from an USB stick - apparently Microsoft considers disk encryption and Remote Desktop to be meant for businesses and not for personal usage
- for software developers Cygwin is the only thing that makes Windows tolerable and Cygwin is awful
The only thing that Windows is good for is for playing games. I'm only keeping it around for playing Heroes of M&M 3 (the classic one) and Path of Exile.
And every time I try Windows, I end up appreciating just how awesome Linux is.
True confession: I tend to cycle slowly through OSX, Linux, and Windows 8.1 because I like a little change. Similar to programming languages. My strange way to have fun :-)
Last time I tried it, I could never be sure when my files had synched. OneDrive would just spin in the background, not even using much CPU or network bandwidth, and with no indication of what the hell it was doing, while the file I just edited remained unsynched for hours.
For a product that wanted people to give it the entire content of their hard drives, OneDrive was woefully inadequate at handling large amounts of data. I ended up copying files manually to the device where I needed them to be, relegating OneDrive to the role of an eventually consistent backup.
When my (paid) subscription was up, I canceled it and never used it again. Now I'm much happier with a 1TB plan at SpiderOak.
Such a shame too since they have the best pricing AFAIK. I wish they would just buy Dropbox, integrate it into Windows in place of OneDrive, and call it a day.
It seems to me that they are backing off metro/"modern Windows" more and more. 8.1 made boot to Desktop the default, they are bringing back the start menu in 10 and Metro apps will run in windows in 10.
The metroization is all over with its terrible blurry font rendering and gimped settings.
Pixel snapping and ClearType are what deliver sharp small fonts at the cost of less "accuracy" since the renderer may need to bump things around by half a pixel or so.
Some people don't care/notice or simply prefer the antialiased look. Up until Win 8/10, this was a choice at the system level, generally.
ClearType was also the subject of some stupid partner-level politics inside of MS, actual end user experience be damned.
Not long and Xbox and Windows will be identical. And sadly, it will be the Xbox that has the dominant genes, UI wise at least.
It is all over their corporate speak, too. "Life time of device" when discussing the upgrade cycle of the OS... What is the life time of my PC that I built myself out of many different vendors offerings?
I, too am a bit worried that all this cloud business is getting more and more traction. When I saw the big warning "Not recommended" when trying to create a normal user account and not one of these windows online account deals I though "You can't be serious". Why would it not be recommended to use a local account which was the norm for so long? Unless they already plan many changes to the OS which would leave users with local accounts in the dust so better to try and convert as many people to our online accounts as possible, they must think.
Either way, I am in the process of building a new rig. The old one didn't even have an i3/5/7 CPU to let you know how long I've been using my current PC. And on this new PC, Windows7 Ultimate will be running the show and I will be watching from the outside over the next 5 years minimum how this Win10 business develops. From my point of view they have 5 years to do a lot of 180s and actually make a Windows11 which will take the under-the-hood advancements of Win8-10 and plug that into Windows7 so we can actually have that Windows7 improvement we all want.
B: I've talked the to the person responsible for MS Accounts in Windows 8. Really cool, smart guy. It was a hard thing to get right, and their intentions were not malicious like it might seem. For most users, using an online account is simply the better solution. Their photos and documents will automatically sync. Apps will automatically sign in and work. They can enable full disk encryption without worrying about losing keys. Enthusiasts can make two extra clicks to avoid it. While it personally annoys me and makes machines easier to compromise (by government), it's the only competitive option for most consumers.
Windows 10 is unpolished and downright janky, but if they get it cleaned up, there's little doubt it'll be pretty well accepted. If they had kept the start menu and not made metro apps so dumb in Win 8, it'd have been fine. Though they do need to make calc and other simple apps open as fast as they do on my bloody phone...
More concerning is the Windows Store, which is a cesspool, and MS shows no signs of caring. I've spoken to several ISVs that simply cannot get MS to help or respond to removing fake/scam/phishing apps. Even Netflix had trouble with this, FFS.
According to this new policy, what will happen with retail licensing? I presume that it will be either very expensive, or available only for enterprise/volume licensing, or simply not available anymore. Now that would suck.
B: while I'm sure that their intentions weren't malicious, I strongly disagree with you and with them.
First of all, encryption on Windows 8.1 standard edition is only available if your hardware supports TPM and SecureBoot on ConnectedStandby. There's absolutely no reason for this limitation. Linux's dm-crypt or ecryptfs do not need it. DiskCryptor does not need it. I smell lock-in.
Also, what is the problem with available encrypting solutions? What is wrong with remembering and inserting a password which would be required only on boot and not on waking up from stand-by?
Also, I repeat ad nauseam my biggest problem with the NSA revelations - if the NSA has the capability of installing back-doors and to coerce companies into doing whatever they want, what's stopping organized crime syndicates from doing the same thing, possibly using NSA's trails OR with their cooperation? It's only a matter of cost. Therefore, an encryption method that's saving the keys on Microsoft's servers is extremely flawed and for no good reason.
This also reminds me of OneDrive versus OneDrive for Business. Basically OneDrive for consumers does not have versioning or a fucking log of the events that happened (like both Google Drive or Dropbox do), because by their own admission, that's for businessy/enterprisish things. If for whatever reason a file disappears, a file out of tens of thousands like I have - well, you'll never know when or how. And also, synchronizing things on-disk is extremely hard because at any moment you've got multiple sources of truth that contend on the same files, with no good way to synchronize shit, which means that all clients are more or less buggy. And regular folks are non-technical and they might not know how to look at the log of events and do debugging, or to recover previous versions of a file, but non-technical folks usually have friends or access to professionals for hire ;-)
And I'm thinking that this is my biggest problem with Microsoft (but not only them) - they treat regular people as dumb fucks that have to be hand-holdem, for a monthly subscription of course (which is a totally understandable thing, since you don't own anything). And then you discover that what Microsoft's notion of personal usage does not apply to you and so for the features you need you need the Awesome edition which costs at least twice, possibly available only on volume licensing.
Now, as far as the whole desktop market is concerned, OS X has always catered to grandmas and to software developers refugees from Linux or other Unixes, Linux has always catered to die-hard backend software developers, while Windows has always catered to the people in between, the middle of the bell curve, the people that can get around their computer, but that don't know its internals, the power users. What we are seeing now is that Microsoft has totally lost the developer mind-share and the results are showing - Microsoft has lost the Internet-wide server-side and its app ecosystem only holds because of inertia, otherwise Apple's ecosystem for native apps is way more attractive.
And now Microsoft is going to lose the power users too, because according to their new directions, their user base are only the grandmas and the dumb ones that never made it to high-school. They are even ignoring the needs of the enterprise. And if that wasn't enough, on ultra portables they are also competing with iOS, Android and Chromebook. Tough times ahead for Microsoft.
I tried skydrive on windows 7 when skydrive was first released, and instructed it to sync a few specific folders. I didn't like it enough to keep using it, so I uninstalled it and forgot about it.
In order to upgrade from 8 to 8.1, I had to put my microsoft account into the system (because the update was only offered through the store). Upon finishing the update, it immediately downloaded everything that had been in the "my documents" folder of my desktop when I had first tried skydrive, two years prior.
I never told it to sync "my documents" during that trial run, and I didn't know those files had been sitting on microsofts server for all that time. I had legal documents stored in there.
Windows 8.1 does things without asking me. Windows 10 will do the same. I don't want them to.
I shouldn't have to spend large amounts of effort making sure my own computer isn't doing things behind my back, regardless of whether microsofts engineers mean the best or not.
If I could remove skydrive (and cortana in win10, and whatever other new ~cloud~ features they dream up), I wouldn't care, but apparently it's all "integrated", so I can't remove it. Consumption is mandatory, it would seem.
Well I'm sorry, but I've worked jobs where the penalty for retaining information you no longer have official need for is 2 years prison. The penalty for leaking information in my current job is "merely" losing my job and consequently being deported.
I don't trust windows 8.1, and I don't trust windows 10. The best word to describe both operating systems is "treacherous".
Cortana can be disabled, or never turned on even.
I for one will not upgrade to Windows 10 until other people have identified all of the crappy cloud-based features (Microsoft Account, OneDrive/SkyDrive, Cortana, etc.) and written blogs on how to disable them permanently. Then I will do a clean install, disable all the crap, and only then connect the external drive that contains all my files.
Most people, though, will not be so cautious. If something is enabled by default, 99.9% of users will just keep it enabled, even if it's possible to disable it. After all, that's the whole point of enabling something by default.
Honestly, as a person who primarily uses Windows over my Mac or Linux boxes, I do wonder if this is a harbinger for Microsoft where people just stop using it. I hated how bad Windows 8 was, but I didn't expect the general consumer public to have the same reaction. I can't see them being happy with the lack of stability and clunkiness that Microsoft seems hell-bent on implementing.
It won't be my primary OS--nothing without zsh will be, and Cygwin isn't sufficient--but I really enjoy using Windows computers again, which I honestly never thought I would say after I switched to OS X.
Yuck. Why?
Lack of depth in 8 makes it harder to figure out which window is in focus and which ones are on top of others.
Had this experience with Mac OS X. For 10.4 they switched to a new, dynamically linked libstdc++ that used the new Itanium C++ ABI. 10.3 had a statically linked libstdc++ and the old ABI.
They pushed out an OS update that installed the new libstdc++ on 10.3, breaking linking against libstdc++ with standard cxxflags. You see they had integrated cross-compilation for 10.3 into the new Xcode on 10.4, and didn't give a shit about people who were still compiling stuff on 10.3.
I decided after that that if Apple was going to break working compilation on my OS because I hadn't upgraded to the newest and shiniest, then they didn't really want my money. They seem to be doing OK without it, and I'm doing fine without them.
If Microsoft pulls this sort of stunt with Windows, then fuck everything about this change. They're such sticklers in the opposite direction, doing so much to ensure backward-compatible everything that the house of cards sometimes comes crashing down, that I don't think that will be a problem with Windows 10+x.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222
I was under the impression that they are currently updating 10.8 to 10.0 (if it affects all these releases).
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204659
https://truesecdev.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/hidden-backdoor-...
Are they backporting this?
With no periodic releases of new versions, it seems that Windows 10 will either be a subscription based service or, in all likelihood, a collection of subscription based services and extra features with a free, but spartan, core.
It's an interesting move, but I suspect MS is severely underestimating the backlash that will exist against monthly OS subscription payments.
Once steam boxes are out and popular, I doubt I'll be using windows again.
I figured most of Microsoft's profits come from software and services running on-top Windows, so SQL Server, Office, etc... Perhaps still charge for Windows Server, but let the Desktop and Mobile versions go free.
In fact I've felt that up until around the last 5 years Windows was primarily focused on business users and consumers were just a happy bonus because what else were they going to run?
So I could see them giving away a version that can't join a domain (no use to business) for consumers, but I'd be very surprised if they did the same for business customers.
In 2014 they changed how they report segment revenue, but as of 2013 the Windows division (non server) had $19 billion in sales for that fiscal year. Revenue for Windows desktop is down a bit from there (perhaps 8%-10%) according to reports throughout 2014.
The operating income on that $19 billion was $9.5 billion. Needless to say it's still a wildly profitable cash cow for Microsoft, albeit a declining business.
I think Microsoft is really spot on here.
Leverage their desktop monopoly to gain market share in the cloud? Sounds familiar. Maybe Azure is just part of Windows, like IE?
It's still unclear if you get an upgrade license or a full license of Windows 10. The first one would mean, if you ever need to reinstall the PC/Notebook (harddisk/ssd crash), you would have to install Win7/8 and then upgrade to Win10 again (if the key allows that and is still valid in e.g. 2017).
ReactOS is an attempt that building an open source version of Windows XP/7. It uses source code from WINE and it aims for better compatibility with legacy apps by using a WinNT-like OS-Kernel: http://www.reactos.org
This was the original vision for Ubuntu Phone
It will never be the case that everyone wants the exact same tradeoffs.
But I find the subscription concept interesting for enterprise customers who are already used to it. Bundle support services and extra add-ons tailored to enterprises in general or particular industry, could have a huge potential for them.
The probable advantage to Microsoft is that they have a less disjointed platform to support. For example apps released for the app store don't run on Windows 7 and earlier, and apps that work on Windows 7 and earlier can't be put on the app store. That sort of thing has been an enormous success killer for some of Microsoft's newer business initiatives, and that in turn means it's a threat to the long-term success of the company.
It might also save on development costs. 3-year release cycles mean you're at great risk of sinking tons and tons of resources into gold plating ideas that ultimately bomb on the market. This new approach means they can fail fast, which means they should be able to produce value more efficiently.
If not, they still could charge for OEM licenses bundled to hardware.
They announced that win32 based apps will have the possibility to be on the store - in one of the videos from build they even used Photoshop as an example.
In other words, they've just announced that they're not going to pull another Vista or Windows 8 that damaged their brand, and neither are they going to make the mistake of supporting XP for so many many years again.
Amusingly, of 10+, I now only have one computing device running Windows at all (and it defaults to booting Ubuntu anyway), and yet Microsoft is still taking my money!
I recently tried out the Win10 tech preview. It's very very hard to disable internet searching whenever you try and find a file, and it's even worse to try and remove OneDrive.
Granted, this is a tech preview, so disabling this will probably be a tiny bit easier in the future, but I think it gives an indication as to the direction Microsoft is moving. Yet another advertising company.
So I could probably have phrased that better.
More recently, it involes traveling to a solid internet connection, downloading incremental updates and distributing them on location.
In Australia, satellite internet was subsidized in the 2000s (and easily eligible). Now, although still subsidized to some extent, you're on your own if you're on a supported line but your telco doesn't have the capacity.
It's a damn nightmare when large software is distributed in this manner for people with insufficient network access.
Note, this experience is from a small family business point of view, without dedicated tech support.
Australians: vote for a government who will build 21st century infrastructure. It's going to get ugly when we run out of shit to dig up and sell to China.
What on earth is wrong with a progress bar and text drawn on the screen instead, like Snow Leopard??
This is also a huge win for not having the need to support super old OSes, which is a huge tax in not just support cost, but also testing and designing for backward compatibility.
The windows driver model had its last major revision in XP -> Vista.
>This is also a huge win for not having the need to support super old OSes
Who wins?
Move the workflow into the web, ditch "office suits", don't touch ANY sw crap by IBM.
About 90% of your workforce can do with an Ubuntu workstation.
This is a response to a bigger paradigm shift that is the web and software as a service and Mobiles.
If you are on Windows XP and windows 7 rolls out, you have the option of upgrading, not upgrading or switching to a Mac (or similar).
Gmail versus outlook is another good example. With Outlook you would need to shell out big bucks and wait for the next major release. A three year release cycle has really got to suck for the team. If your team's major feature X didn't make it in the current release, you could very well end up waiting another three years. Gmail's releases by contrast are liberating.
The Chrome browser versus IE is another glaringly obvious misstep. One doesn't even care about version numbers anymore and releases indiscriminately while the other feels like an antiquated behemoth that rears it's ugly head every few years and then goes back into hibernation for years. It's a shame, really.
The mobile landscape has shifted to something similar. My upgrades on iOS come seamlessly and effortlessly. Apple can push whatever it wants down upgrade pipeline without costs.
For years desktop companies have relied on pushing the hardware limits to force users to upgrade their hardware, followed by the operating system and consequently all the software running atop that OS. It has been a tremendous boon for every Windows-based software company, almost guaranteeing fresh inflows every three years. So this is going to have an impact on the entire ecosystem.
From a developer's perspective:
Software rewrites cause regression. Microsoft has been regressing all over the place, for years now, most prominently with their Windows releases. For anyone who doesn't write software for a living, regression happens typically when you rewrite a piece of code and in doing so reintroduce old edge conditions or have to re-tweak all the features around it. Only after that does the new rewrite start paying dividends.
Continuous release cycles sidestep the regression issue to some extent by making the iterations smaller and the features less jarring for the users (Windows 7).
As a consumer:
I like the AppStore model because it doesn't charge me for versions (I know that might note bode well for developers because lifetime revenue per app becomes fairly static. A good friend of mine is just completing a rewrite of his app and his entire existing user base will probably end up getting it for free. However, this is still the option of IAP, product SKUs or subscription models).
In some cases, I want to stay on an older version because a new release breaks compatibility with plugin X, or upgrading would require me to change a workflow that is working well, or because I have muscle memory built around the UI of the existing version, and I don't have to think when I use the app. If an older version still gets security and bug fixes, then I might only upgrade when the benefit (new features and improvements) outweighs the effort/cost required to adopt the new version.
It also encourages frequent, fad-driven UI refreshes, and this is worst seen with web applications like Facebook and Gmail. Every so often, Google Maps plays hide and seek with the terrain view button.
Sometimes, stability and a slower release cycle (while still providing timely security updates) is good. It prevents the developers from playing fast and loose with the UI, and gives them time to work out compatibility issues with the larger ecosystem.
How do you place the decision to upgrade in the user's hands, while avoiding a situation where 17% of computers in the world still run Windows XP [1]?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
I still use an iPhone4 and my biggest mistake was upgrading to iOS7 (I suppose I could jail break it and downgrade it but doesn't that make it more of a pain for development?). It would be nice if there was an option to downgrade via Apple, but all old versions seem to get thrown out. That would not have been be a problem with the previous models of updating because I would have a physical copy of the software.
I understand that they just want to support the latest hardware because it makes things a lot easier for them and keeps costs down a lot, but it just seems so wasteful to purposefully break hardware with an upgrade.
If there was a choice between paid upgrades (with access to previous versions) and free forced upgrades, I would pick the former, but it seems like things are moving toward the latter.
Edit: "That would be a problem..." corrected to "That would not have been a problem..."
Maybe the minor versions could all be named after something interesting, like different species of large cats, or Washington area landmarks?
WinOS 10.10 Rainier?
1) as others are suggesting, they'll adopt Apple's versioning model putting everything under the windows 10 umbrella.
2) they are setting the table for a rebranding/replacement of Windows in the same fashion as they are doing with IE.
That said, I'd agree that it'd be a bad move to rebrand Windows just yet. Then again, DOS was a well-known and well-liked brand too.
The only downside is that you have to really plan out deprecating features. It's easy to drop features when going from major release to major release, but in a rolling update, you need to give developers a heads up that things are about to change and give them time to fix things in their code.
OSX does have mini patch update. It seems like their new version is always bleeding edge, yosemite had major wifi drop issue even though they supposely fixed it with a few patches.
The article made it seem like there is no more major version and just Window 10 and bunch of patches/features?
Microsoft is even stopping on Windows 10!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Subspecies_of_Canis_lu...
Windows 10 Dingo. Would be funny.
Windows 10 chihuahua
Windows 10 chinook
Windows 10 chippiparai
Windows 10 chowchow
So there will still be major versions, each with their own security patches etc. -- I don't think there's any way around that.
At least this lets Microsoft keep more people up to date and minimize version skew -- "You want to upgrade, we want you to upgrade ... by all means go ahead and upgrade!"
If that's truly the case, I'm not at all looking forward to having to re-buy a license for a different machine when the one I'm on finally lets out the magic smoke, moreso given Microsoft's previous arbitrary activation rules on what constitutes a "different machine".
I can see consumers being annoyed have to pay every month to use the computer now. With the current versioned releases the consumer has a choice whether to pay for the upgrade or not.
In the enterprise space I dont see how this will work. There are plenty of reasons that some companies are still clinging to Windows XP. For a large company to give up control over exactly what is on each computer and be able to plan long term is a non starter. Would we then see yearly "cumulative packs" being offered that can be tested prior to release?
Would there be a central tool provided by Microsoft for the enterprise customers that will allow them to control the exact feature versions, fixes etc for every computer centrally and that way to cumulative upgrades?
I would love for Microsoft to come out with a new Next Generation Operating system that breaks compatibility even more than Windows NT did back in the day. I think its long overdue but unfortunately i don't see it happening anytime soon.
They are investing a lot now in trying to use as much of the codebase as possible across all of their targeted devices. I
Yeah, I'm wondering if Canonical's marketing department is readying the champagne.
>2016
>Year of the linux desktop?If Microsoft charges a small charge for Windows updates, which I don't think they will, I probably won't mind.
And of course owning the Desktop OS market continues to put them in a strong position in the profitable enterprise market which doesn't mind paying for features and support.
Anyway, devs will know what was components were released on a particular date, and target those components. It's not rocket science. :)
If anything things are churning a little too much, and this is before the Wayland/Mir transitions have started to kick off yet.
As a server os I have no complaints though.
Remember Office 365? You don't own a copy of Office, you only rent it per year and when updates come out you get the updates as long as you keep paying.
Windows 10 is going to be a software subscription model. They'll most likely have a free upgrade version but it is limited in features. If you want more features you will have to buy a subscription.
They already announced a Windows 10.1 codenamed Redstone. So each Windows update will have a 10 in front of it for now on. Will Microsoft charge for upgrading to 10.1? Who knows? Instead of service packs, they just do what Apple does and add a new number after the 10 and call in a minor version or whatever.
I got a feeling pirated Windows users will get a free update that is basically a Starter Edition with limits on it, and they have to buy a subscription to get out of the limited version.
Microsoft cannot do that because OEMs sell PCs and bundle Windows with it. A totally different business model than Apple has. Steve Ballmer tried to copy the Apple Business Model with Surface Tablets and the Microsoft Store, and he failed.
I bought Windows 8 Pro upgrade for $40 when it came out.
Microsoft might give Windows 10 out for free to make money on the Windows Store that sells apps, movies, music, and other things.
Personally, I like the rolling model. Chromebook is probably best example for regular users.
If I had a penny every time I had to help a friend with a failed Ubuntu upgrade...
Why did you not type it into the CLI? If not a runlevel 3 perhaps with a tiling window manager.
I jest :-)
sudo pacman -Syu;
This would work especially well coupled with the global "floating identities" introduced through signing in with your Microsoft Account. The image I would have is of Windows being automatically updated either way, but preventing sign-in to Microsoft Accounts whose subscriptions have lapsed (save for some limited kiosk functionality related to renewing the subscription, and local administrator access for fixing Internet connectivity et al.)
If there is no subscription then how will they charge users - per "major update"? Like some sort of Windows 10.1? What would happened to the Windows 10 users who don't want to pay for that update then? Do they still get security fixes?
Perhaps they don't see Windows as the cash cow that it once was and will make all upgrades free.
Edit: if this [1] reuters article is true (I couldn't find a reference on Microsoft's site), they are also including pirated versions...
[0] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/about
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/18/us-microsoft-china...
Basically they'd be betting the Windows franchise on enough people upgrading their hardware every year that fees from upgraders' new licenses could support all the free riders who didn't upgrade that year.
[1] Arguably the first sale doctrine means that this might not be a restriction Microsoft can impose at the legal layer. But they'd certainly to get around any such restriction by trying to implement it at the technology layer with DRM -- refusing to provide any supported way to move their license from one machine to another.
Of course any technological restriction will always boil down to a conditional jump instruction that can be patched out, which leads to a kind of "arms race" between the pirates and the DRM. Recently there was an HN article about a (rather old) piece of software which contained multiple piracy checks to sabotage the long-term user experience of pirated versions in a way that wouldn't be immediately obvious (so users would be punished for using illegal versions, but the long-term checks would be subtle enough to slip past crackers' QA and they'd likely ship partially cracked versions that didn't patch all the checks that needed to be patched). Including deliberately deleting user data after prolonged use: http://starmen.net/mother2/gameinfo/antipiracy/
This anti-pattern in API design is annoying enough in HTML5. Awesome to see it's now leaking into the OS world.
Previous Windows updates were shipped too slowly, due to having to amass enough updates to justify a three digit price tag. Now, updates to Windows will be shipped to consumers when they're ready. No predetermined release schedule. I would compare this strategy more to evergreen browsers like Chrome.
That said, this "new" MS is focusing more on cloud than anything else, so a MSLinux is probably more a question of "when" than "if".
Or are they just going to rely on people just paying for the convenience of having Windows pre-installed and working out of the box?
In all honesty, they'll probably do fine relying on the latter.
maybe a better take away is that microsoft will be maintaining their code and regularly pushing patches, as opposed to the very discrete service pack updates
If people can opt out of automatic updates, the only difference I see here is the update mechanism and its default setting. Apple has to change 1 thing on its iOS updates to do the same.
Edit: I hope HP Machine OS will bring something interesting and new to stagnating OS research field.
The world did not want Windows 8.
EDIT: I didn't mean this maliciously, but I was genuinely asking because a comment like "I wish it would go away" is clearly not rooted in reality given the widespread use of Windows and the millions of users, happy or not.
I cant abide when something pragmatic has its design intentionally made less useful for arbitrary reasons. As I said, I'm fine, I'm just going more and more towards linux, where the goal is to make the OS as useful as possible and most importantly empower the user rather than the other way around. I just still have to use windows 8 and osx in work.
For me I had to go to my motherboard maker's website and download the 8/8.1 64 bit drivers, update the BIOS, and then get the Nividia drivers for my GPU and make sure they always update.
GPU drives can break Windows 8.1 when it comes to video games. There are always updated drivers that fix issues with video games. This is because video game makers do mistakes with DirectX and other APIs and the updated drivers fix the issues with workarounds to avoid crashes.
Windows 8.1 changes the way DirectX 9 works, for classic video games like Civilization II Gold Edition I had to apply the 64 bit patch and then extract the 2010 version of DirectX 9 drivers into the Civ2 directory to get DirectPlay support to play the game.
It takes a lot of JiggeryPokery like that to get some of the classic games to work, and sometimes you have to choose the compatibility mode of a previous version of Windows to force it to work. The average person can't always figure that out.
Vista and above has compatibility issues and it needs workarounds like I explained to get things to work.
Windows 7 added a better compatibility mode and fixed some of the flaws with Vista. It even added a Windows XP mode in the Enterprise and Pro and up editions to download an XP virtual machine. To get some software to work.
But Microsoft abandoned XP support, and is forcing companies and people to upgrade.
I know a lot of people and businesses still on XP/Vista because it came with their PC, and their software works with it so they stick with it.
The whole reason why Apple sells a lot of Macs is that Windows has become so awful to support legacy apps that people don't mind paying more for an alternative that works better and apps just install without issues on a Mac.
Some are going to Linux, and Linux as a web server does a better job than Windows Server 2012. Microsoft sells Azure services for people who can't figure out how to set up a Windows Server or a Windows machine.
Microsoft lost $1.89B on Surface Tablets and Windows 8.X sales. It is the real reason why Steve Ballmer was forced into early retirement. They used the Metro/Modern UI which is confusing and they broke compatibility that needs tricks to get around it. They got rid of the Start Menu, etc. The changes made it worse to the average user experience.
I really don't see Windows 10 addressing the compatibility issues, an the Start Menu they use is quite a bit different from the XP/Vista/7 Start Menu.
I donated some money to the ReactOS project: https://www.reactos.org/
It is an attempt that building an open source version of Windows based on XP etc. It uses source code from WINE, and it aims for better compatibility with legacy apps.