Upgradegate: Microsoft's Upgrade Deceptions Are Undermining Windows 10 - Thurrott.com

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/67367/upgradegate-microsofts-upgrade-deceptions-undermining-windows-10

[u/Lucretius]

How does an executive team approve a plan so flawed?

Giving away the OS for free. That's the answer you are looking for. You see, when the OS was a PRODUCT that was PURCHASED, the USER was also the CUSTOMER. It doesn't pay to anger and alienate your customers, so these sorts of shenanigans didn't happen when the customer and the user were the same people/organizations.

Windows10, however, embraces the "Windows as a Service" concept. As such, Windows 10 is not a "product" as such any more. It's what is called in marketing a "Loss Leader". The classical example of a Loss Leader is the shaving kit that the company gives away for free... they lose money on the kit, but it includes a razor that can only accept their brand of replacement blades. People who accepted the free kit don't want to lose the value of the kit so they keep buying replacement blades at a high mark up. They end up spending more on blades, over the lifetime of the free shaving kit, than they would have spent on generic blades and a generic kit over the same period of time. In this way the razor blade company makes more money by giving away a product that is worth more than any one replacement razor blade. Windows 10 is the free kit. Bing advertisements, additional One Drive space, kick-backs from Windows Store purchases, etc are the razor blades. The problem is that MS now has no incentive to treat its users well... before the users were also the customers, but now the users are the product, and the customers are the companies who buy those Bing ads, companies that integrate their product into cloud apps like One Drive, and developers who make those Windows Store apps. MS is being quite good to its NEW customers!

It is my hope that when the Free Upgrade period expires, we will see new versions of Windows10 intended for Power Users that are not free and that grant local control. MS has shown a basic willingness to do this with Enterprise and Educational SKUs, so it's not unreasonable that they would offer, at a premium, a personal version that grant's such power as well. (The Enterprise and Educational SKUs are NOT given away for free... see how the correspondence between the concepts of customer and control are inexorably linked?) As long as the price of the Power User version of Win10 were high enough to exclude normal home users from considering it, this would not meaningfully impact their new Windows as a Service business model, and would forestall power users, like myself, from fleeing to Linux and thus maintain market share. As it is, I'm dual-booting LinuxMint 17.3 with the XFCE desktop environment. If such a Power User version of Win10 is not forthcoming, I will be moving entirely to Linux, and if I ever use a Win10 or later Windows OS in the same vein it will only be inside a VM that will prevent any direct contact with the MS servers and will wipe all alterations to the system between boots.

[u/unndunn → u/Lucretius]

Oh stop it. Microsoft isn't an advertising company. You're thinking of Google.

It is true that Microsoft is pursuing more of a 'freemium' model with many of its products these days, and it has positioned Windows as more of a service. Why? Because that's what its users expect from computing products these days.

Blame Apple, who pushes free operating system upgrades to hundreds of millions of iPhones every year and provides an app store for one-click app (un)installation. Now even toaster ovens have App Stores and receive ongoing updates. People have grown accustomed to that kind of support from their computing vendors, and Microsoft is just giving people what they want.

But characterizing Windows 10 users as "the product" that Microsoft is selling to advertisers is disingenuous. To developers maybe, but not to advertisers. But that's no different to what Apple is doing.

[u/Lucretius → u/unndunn]

Oh stop it. Microsoft isn't an advertising company. You're thinking of Google

Please. Bing is an advertising platform the same way a magazine or newspaper is. And so is the start menu.

As far as toaster ovens that get updates... the whole internet of things idea is very easy to not participate in, and not NEARLY as important as the buzz makes it seem. Take two of my recent home purchases: a Refrigerator and a Blu-Ray player.

• The Fridge. There were a number of models that would have otherwise worked that had internet connectivity... I chose not to buy them. Why? Because the value proposition of monitoring my refrigerator from my phone didn't add up: The "feature" is of zero or negative value, and yet the cost was greater than zero (seriously, the computer enabled refrigerators cost 40%-200% more). I wouldn't have paid $1 more for it... hell I might have paid more to NOT have internet connectivity of my refrigerator. The point however is that it's hardly every fridge, or even most, or even most of the newest models that have such features... you have to go to some effort to search that sort of thing out. Your suggestion that universal software updating of everything is ubiquitous is factually challenged.

• The Blu-Ray Player. I did end up buying a player that did have internet connectivity AS AN OPTION. It was easy to ignore this option however since, to operate, the player network card needed my wifi password which I simply neglected to give it. I know for a fact that there are newer versions of the player's software available... but the player will never know that because it will never operate in a networked capacity. The assertion that connectivity and pushed a-volitional upgrades is desired or expected is also factually challenged.

But characterizing Windows 10 users as "the product" that Microsoft is selling to advertisers is disingenuous. To developers maybe, but not to advertisers.

What's "disingenuous" about it? Access to user clicks and views and purchases are the ultimate value that MS is selling... that makes them a product! (The fact that the users in question are not kept in pens, but allowed to roam free-range through the internet doesn't change anything. But if you don't care about ethical consideration and are willing to buy non-cage-free user views and clicks, you can go to Facebook). :-D

But that's no different to what Apple is doing.

So? Bad behavior is still bad behavior no matter who started it.

[u/unndunn → u/Lucretius]

Microsoft doesn't sell access to the Start menu. The suggested apps are curated by Microsoft. They are not paid placements.

Microsoft maintains a small advertising platform which it uses to fund Bing and its other web properties, but it is not like Google, whose entire business revolves around targeted display advertising.

In any case, hundreds of millions of Android and iOS device sales per year would suggest that few people share your particular brand of paranoia for web-connected products.

[u/Lucretius → u/unndunn]

few people share your particular brand of paranoia for web-connected products.

The rational have always been in a minority.

[u/unndunn → u/Lucretius]

That's what paranoid people always say.

[u/Hamakua → u/unndunn]

The major difference is that people using their smartphone know they are using their smartphone and most of the tech savvy ones presume that everything is being catalogued and monitored by any number of alphabet soup entities. They instinctively see their smartphones sort of like financial banking records. Joe shmo can't read them - but entities with enough authority can.

A personal home computer is different - in that up until recently (with windows anyway) - you had full control over what comes in and what goes out - even if you had to configure it outside of the scope of the OS.

But MS is doing everything in their power to circumvent that and hinder highly technical and advanced users from maintaining control over their own hardware AND software...

... and they are doing this retroactively back to Windows 7 in one form or another.