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Windows 10 - First Impressions


dencorso

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Just noticed something peculiar about the Windows Updates app (build 10074): if you go to Settings, then select Update & Security, then click on "Advanced options," at the top of the window you can "View your update history." Now if you click on that, you're offered a choice to "Uninstall updates," which sends you to the Control Panel applet that lets you do just that.

 

OK, but isn't this kind of pointless as Windows 10 is currently configured? Given that you can no longer hide or even decline unwanted updates, if you uninstall an update it will simply pop back up and install itself without regard to your wishes, and whatever problem it caused that led you to uninstall it will keep coming back.

 

The only reason I can see for this is for testing purposes, to see if uninstalling gets rid of the issue. But this is a rather limited purpose, considering you can't pass up the problem update.

 

I haven't heard any suggestion that Microsoft intends to let users permanently decline their updates in Windows 10 RTM. What other scenarios are there to justify the uninstall option in the new OS?

 

--JorgeA

 

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Unfortunately, John will not complain to Microsoft.  He will complain to the author of Win 7 The Sequel who has charged him money.

 

-Noel

 

Third-party developers will have to be proactive in alerting their customers to these problems as soon as they arise -- and direct them to complain to Microsoft for moving the goal posts, even as they pledge to try to fix any incompatibilities ASAP.

 

--JorgeA

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Thing is, no one will blame Mother Microsoft, because they have a huge budget for spin and hype.

 

Glitz sells.  Features are secondary.  "To work" may be an option.  Or not.

 

Consider all this Spartan BS.  What, exactly, does a "new browser" buy anyone?  They've turned a reduced-feature browser that (as far as I can tell) works much WORSE than Internet Explorer, into a "feature" that they have people salivating about.

 

There's really no way to educate consumers in this age of glitz and fashion.  We can talk all we want about it here, and we can see exactly what's happening, but unlike in fairy tales no one wants to hear the little boy exclaiming the Emperor has no clothes.

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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Thing is, no one will blame Mother Microsoft, because they have a huge budget for spin and hype.

Well, I wouldn't confuse superficiality with stupidity.

 

The masses may well be not fully aware of the workings of an OS, but in relatively recent times the very same paradigm shift that made the PC (or however a computer) change from a working tool into an entertainment apparatus[1] has also moved the focus from "let me fix it" to "it should just work".

 

So the second or third time people will wake up in the morning to find their beloved tablet/whatever botched overnight by a MS update (botched in itself or conflicting with some other piece of software) will actually become vocal.

 

Consider also how little by little people won't have anymore cabled connections (everything being Wi-Fi) and won't probably have anymore a "real PC" (with a more "sane" OS) to use in emergency.

 

I hope that this never happens, but in a household with (say) three devices all running the new Windows 10 and set with "automatic updates" a "buggy" update would equate to cutting their main communication lines.  :ph34r:

 

jaclaz

 

[1] or if you prefer as a "primary utility", not entirely unlike (say) a TV, a fridge or electricity/running water, i.e. something that you expect to have working 24/7 without any intervention

Edited by jaclaz
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As someone who has also developed a lot of skills in knowing what they're looking at, I see no evidence that Microsoft has become capable of delivering Windows Updates of a quality level worthy of "primary utility" status.  In fact, given their willingness to use Windows Update as a tool for shill delivery, lacking documentation, and the greater incidence of recent reports of broken systems, I'd have to judge that they're heading in just the opposite direction.

 

Note that the Business Ring is published to delay updates for some time (months?) so that the [worthless] public will have the opportunity to find and report the alpha and beta level bugs, thereby preventing [slightly less worthless] business customers from having to deal with them directly.  If that's not an admission that they're planning to deliver botched updates I don't know what is.

 

But our opinions differ on whether the general public of consumers will suddenly wake up from their media-induced stupor and begin to demand better quality when it stops working.  For those who can actually sense it's not working, I suspect they'll just drop their poorly-functioning or non-functional devices and go buy other ones.  I don't know of anyone who has anything bad to say about their cell phones, yet I don't believe I've ever had or overheard a cell phone conversation in which "I didn't catch that" or "you're breaking up" or "what? huh?" didn't happen.  It's not fashionable to complain about things not working.  You're labeled a hater if you do that.

 

fNir4ck.gif

 

-Noel

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Well, but actually it is as well not fashionable to have non working apparata, so while it is entirely possible that the masses of people will just replace the devices, I believe they will then buy *something else*, and this in the end will produce an even worse level of failure.

 

The whole point that I completely fail understanding  :w00t:  is what actual advantage do the good MS guys expect from the "continuous updated" model when compared to the "classical" Patch Tuesday :unsure:.

 

As a side note, and probably not particularly relevant in terms of "large numbers" the (BTW IMHO stupid) new approach about BYOD:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163387-byod-ideas-opinions-whatever/

may make the division between "business" and "the rest" more thin than expected.

 

jaclaz

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Thing is, no one will blame Mother Microsoft, because they have a huge budget for spin and hype.

 

Glitz sells.  Features are secondary.  "To work" may be an option.  Or not.

 

Consider all this Spartan BS.  What, exactly, does a "new browser" buy anyone?  They've turned a reduced-feature browser that (as far as I can tell) works much WORSE than Internet Explorer, into a "feature" that they have people salivating about.

 

There's really no way to educate consumers in this age of glitz and fashion.  We can talk all we want about it here, and we can see exactly what's happening, but unlike in fairy tales no one wants to hear the little boy exclaiming the Emperor has no clothes.

 

-Noel

 

One thing that gives hope in this regard is the perception the public developed about Windows 8, despite the marketing budget and despite all the best efforts by Microsoft and its astroturf shills (as detailed in the Windows 8 Deeper Impressions thread) to create buzz around Win8. We are disappointed of course that Microsoft's response was to double down on turning Windows into a mobile OS, but they did sense the need to respond somehow -- and if they bash their heads against the wall once again, PC sales will start dropping even more dramatically than they have (no XP EOL to rescue them), at which point you can be sure that stockholders will take notice and their OEM partners will raise a ruckus.

 

As for Spartan/Edge, today I discovered something interesting and something annoying about the Print feature. When you go to print a Web page and access the print settings within Spartan, if you select "more settings" you get a loooong list of drop-down sizes under "Paper and quality." That's nice.

 

What is not so nice is that this list expands and shrinks horizontally as you scroll around. If you're using the scroll arrows to move up and down the list, the pointer comes off the scroll arrow (or, more accurately, the arrow comes off where the pointer is) and eventually the scrolling stops and you have to move the pointer back over the arrow. The fact that the arrows disappear after a brief period of inactivity increases the frustration factor.

 

Here are some screenshots to show what I mean by the drop-down list's widening and narrowing:

 

XiSKI48.png

 

 

he4hORg.png

 

pmjEDyg.png

 

nWl1yI4.png

 

Incidentally, maybe @jaclaz can fill us in on what that "Envelope Italian" size might be.  ;)

 

--JorgeA

Edited by JorgeA
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Well, but actually it is as well not fashionable to have non working apparata

 

No!  That's exactly my point!  No one here seems to give a **** whether the tech actually works any more.  Maybe that's different here than where you are.  You European lot seem less likely to be baffled by BS.

 

-Noel

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the arrow comes off where the pointer is

 

 

EXCELLENT example of my point.

 

No one in their right mind would call that "tech that works".  No decent engineer would design a system that would do that.

 

Yet here it is.

 

-Noel

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Maybe that's different here than where you are.  You European lot seem less likely to be baffled by BS.

 

Well, we also have a much longer (several centuries) experience than you in the US about abuses by Kings and Governments, maybe that's the difference. :unsure:

Now whether this will actually bring people to a "revolution" is another matter, all in all it is more likely that the people will do nothing about it, but at least the actual detection of BS is something automatic and spontaneous. 

 

jaclaz

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The very definition still lies in the menus.

 

Group Policy Editor vs 'Settings App' , one is a narrow minded easy touch for the most basic of settings. The other is real Windows.

 

We can only hope the very serious tools that define Windows remain. 'Business Mode / #What ever'.

 

It seems each major version download is 2+Gb of little more than visual eye candy changes and a new broken or half baked feature.

 

Did you see todays News of Build 10130 in the internal 'rounds.... trying to tell us how much polish goes into each release.

 

My take is the OSG group tries their best to ensure the 'Nu-Microsoft / Paid app support ring' doesn't screw up the main flighting branch core too badly.

 

Everything else is legacy game- but lessons have been long learnt..

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My take is the OSG group tries their best to ensure the 'Nu-Microsoft / Paid app support ring' doesn't screw up the main flighting branch core too badly.

 

That's a relatively optimistic way to look at it. I hope you're right, but the way things are going the good guys seem to be losing the battle.

 

Here's something I came across while researching something else, and which has some bearing on what you said:

 

You get the idea Nadella doesn't use computers any more than the target market. Gates may be more businessman than geek, but at least he is a geek. Or was. They did some highly immoral stuff in his day, and made the odd blooper, but Microsoft under Gates was a golden age compared to what it has become since.

One of the great complaints about Windows 8 was the being plunged from the desktop into full screen Metro. Last night 10041 did that to me - to notify that updates were available. I was typing an email at the time; suddenly the entire desktop was 'stolen' by this screen with it's single button and less than half-a-dozen words. The 'updates' (sic) was just the Office File Validation Add-in I keep refusing, but that isn't the point. Anyway I rebooted to 7 and formatted the 10 partition. I think I'll call it a day wrt testing Windows 10. I used to beta test their systems to RTM, until 8, where I knew well before then what a waste of time it was, and that Microsoft only heard the fanbois. The MVP program was to flatter geeks into providing Customer Support for minimal outlay. The 'improvements' in Windows 10 are to get the sycophants whooping loud enough to drown out the naysayers, so the naifs hear how great it is. Like with Mozilla, and Google, and Facebook, and so on and on, it's not so much the dream of a global community these days as psychological warfare! Once there was an element of idealism but now there is only naked greed.

 

--JorgeA

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There are still reasonable people out there (Joel Cairo has my respect).  Note that reasonable doesn't mean wishywashy.  Reasonable people can have quite extreme opinions.  Extreme is sometimes warranted.  Psychological warfare indeed!

 

-Noel

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If I may share my observation (which is more like a rant), in addition to MS completely screwing up their OS, they've also done a pretty good job of screwing up Office on a continual basis, PPT in particular. I could easily hog up this whole thread with complaints about how they've dumbed things down in this program over the years (is there a thread? maybe someone should make one!). For the past four months I've had to get used to 2010 after having used 2007 and, I swear, every day something crops up that baffles logic, has no fix and just makes me want to cry. The latest thing I discovered was with the animations in that they all now have a feathered edge, like the wipe effect -- this feathered edge completely screws up the effect!!!! And, sure enough, just like everything else, I google it, find that I'm not alone in being unhappy about it, and that the only solution is to "deal with it."
 

Why is it that every time there's a new feature added to a Microsoft product, another equally useful feature is lost?  Who beta tests this stuff?

 

It's maddening that the PowerPoint product managers at Microsoft haven't fixed this. The hard-edge/soft-edge in a wipe should be a simple toggle in the effect settings. It's a classic example of not being in touch with their customer base and taking a "Let us tell you what you want" approach to product improvements.

 

I'd bet their reasoning was simply "a feathered edge looks kool!" And that's all that really matters in achieving productivity today, right? smh...

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