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.
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?
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.
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 will] let Microsoft tinker more with the software to test new features and see how customers like them
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?