"If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good."

--Bill Gates, Microsoft

Summary: Microsoft's latest incarnation of Windows is rejected by a large number of people (growth reportedly stalls), so the company is going to force people to use it regardless of their preferences, and also spy on the users regardless of their preferences

Imposed 'Upgrades'

VISTA 10 (no typo here) is an aggressive operating system. Its aggression is not an accident. It was designed to impose itself on people and 'steal' their data. Vista 10's force-feeding was not an accident, either. Microsoft lied. Shortly after the company claimed that people having Vista 10 imposed on them was an accident the company admits that it will inevitably happen to everyone, very much by design. There are many articles about it these days [1, 2]. One article's headline says that "Next year's Windows 10 auto-upgrade is MSFT's worst idea since Vista". To quote: "But deciding to make the upgrade part of the patching cycle is a grave mistake. True, it's only going to be an optional upgrade at the moment, but by early next year the pressure is going to be raised, and anyone who automatically installs recommended security patches will find themselves with a new operating system waiting to start.

"As of next year, Windows 10 will be so "popular" ("people everywhere love Windows 10" as a liar might put it) that Microsoft has to impose it on everyone.""And just about everyone installs recommended updates automatically because Microsoft insists on it.

"This isn't going to be an issue for companies – IT managers know the score and they will install Windows 10 when they are good and ready (if at all) – and tech-savvy consumers will also be prepared."

As of next year, Windows 10 will be so "popular" ("people everywhere love Windows 10" as a liar might put it) that Microsoft has to impose it on everyone. It is reported right now that "Windows 10 growth stalls during October", so no wonder Microsoft resorts to these unethical, desperate tactics. Can this yield class action lawsuits? Have Microsoft's lawyers already crafted a EULA Orwellian enough? "Don't want Windows 10?" asked one headline, "Check your settings! Microsoft to begin automatically upgrading user's machines" ('upgrading' in scare quotes would be more apt, unless the author is wrongly assuming that giving Microsoft so much data is a step up).

Back Doors and Surveillance

"Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped," says a new article from Forbes, stating:

Last week changes to the Windows 10 upgrade path mean it is going to become increasingly difficult for any non-techy users to avoid being pushed to Microsoft new operating system. But given Windows 10 is better than Windows 7 and Windows 8, why would that be a problem? Because of policies like this…

Speaking to PC World, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore explained that Windows 10 is constantly tracking how it operates and how you are using it and sending that information back to Microsoft by default. More importantly he also confirmed that, despite offering some options to turn elements of tracking off, core data collection simply cannot be stopped:

“In the cases where we’ve not provided options, we feel that those things have to do with the health of the system,” he said. “In the case of knowing that our system that we’ve created is crashing, or is having serious performance problems, we view that as so helpful to the ecosystem and so not an issue of personal privacy, that today we collect that data so that we make that experience better for everyone.”

This backs up detailed data that some had chosen to dismiss as conspiracy theories.

Security is getting worse, enabling easier access by the NSA. To quote a new report from The Register: "Two chaps claim to have discovered how to trivially circumvent Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) using Redmond's own compatibility tools.

"A report [PDF] by the duo at Duo Security describes how the Windows on Windows (WoW64) environment can be abused to bypass builtin security tools."

Security was never a goal when it comes to Windows. That's why Microsoft grabbing data and gaining total control of people's PCs (then silently taking their data) isn't considered (by Microsoft) to be all that overzealous an approach. Interestingly enough, based on this article, Microsoft wants to start charging more people to merely share their files with the NSA et al via PRISM. "Just over a year," explained a report, "after it started offering unlimited OneDrive cloud storage for Office 365 subscribers, Microsoft is going back on the deal. Complaining that too many users were taking advantage of the unlimited space to store entire movie collections, hours of recorded video, and entire PC backups, Microsoft has introduced a new limit of 1 TB on OneDrive storage. At the same time, the company has reducing its free OneDrive storage from 15 GB to 5 GB, and removed its 100 GB and 200 GB plans, to be replaced by a new 50 GB plan for $1.99 a month."

So people are going to pay even more to be spied on (i.e. become the product)? Microsoft sure is desperate for a new cash cow, be it the spies or the people who pay for the privilege to be spied on.

"Windows 10 Years Ago"

To make matters worse, privacy violations and imposition thereof aside, Google's head of design says that it's not "Windows 10" but "More like Windows 10 years ago". According to this article, "his criticisms of Windows 10 were not directed at how it looks, but rather how it works."

To quote: "It's quite the criticism coming from the father of Google's Material Design philosophy. Duarte is credited with revamping the look and feel of the company's Android operating system. Duarte wants users of technology to think of software in physical terms. And no, not the ugly, tacky way skeuomorphism invaded early smartphone design with faux-leather and illusions of depth, but the way software would exist if materialized in the world like paper."

If the yardstick for comparison here is Vista 8 rather than GNU/Linux distributions, then surely one's analysis of Vista 10 wrongly assumes that Windows is inevitable and no potent alternative exists. Fedora 23 will come out today; therein lies a real alternative. ⬆