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Ask: Has Microsoft spent your trust

20 points by davidgrenier ↗ HN
Microsoft has spent the little trust they had earned from me with this KB in particular: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583

No matter if I hide it from the Windows Update list, it comes back as it just did.

I ruined one installation with this shady update and I've started checking every single update something I used not to do in the past.

38 comments

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meric
Microsoft has not spent my trust.

I was born in a Mac OS household. By the time I was born, my parents used Apple II clones and Macintoshes for over a decade. I have used Macintosh my whole life, except for the time before I was computer literate.

There was a time when I played Lord of the Realms on hand-me-down Windows 3.1 greyscale laptop I got for free in 2005, and a time when I played Age of Empires on another hand-me-down Pentium I desktop I bought for $99 in 1999. Those were the best times. I also used PowerPoint during primary school and high school.

Having no other experience with Microsoft software, I cannot emphatically say Microsoft has spent my trust.

On the other hand, I have a huge degree of trust in Apple software, which, I must say, has been slowly eroding in the years since the passing of Steve Jobs.

ankurdhama
Few years ago I bought Windows 8.1 from some online store. Used the activation key, worked fine, after few months needed to format the system and reinstall windows. Activation key won't work anymore, called the MS support, told them the key, found out that the key was from some "student/education program" and is no longer valid... WTF.

For last 2 years I have been using macOS (osx) and no crap of activation there and most importantly once you understand the abstractions of UNIX you wouldn't want to use any other architecture :)

I guess some major problem with Windows is the business model of OEM around the OS.

TheAdamist
Maybe your issue should be with the online store who sold you a bad key? I don't see what microsoft has to do with this.

The police coming to take away a stolen macbook after you buy it from a dodgy site is going to make you mad at apple?

ankurdhama
My point is that they MS business model is responsible for these problems. Yes the store is selling keys that are not meant for selling but the whole key thing is in the place because of the business model. There are ways to figure out that the a macbook is stolen and you can avoid it but how are you going to figure out if the key will give you problems later before using the key?
codeonfire
A while back. It was fairly clear to me that they thought they were going to herd everyone into a walled garden with their surface/ windows 8 RT strategy which obviously did not work. They had planned to muddle the market so customers would accidently buy an RT table instead of a full PC tablet. RT tablets could only install from an app store. That didn't really work and about that time is when Ballmer said fuck it and handed the company over to people who have no comprehension of western ideals about what is culturally acceptable when it comes to privacy. Original Microsoft was built from an environment that grew up with the fourth amendment, a valid functioning legal system, etc. Current Microsoft culture is wholly international and reflects the lack of privacy culture, civil rights, and government restraint in many countries represented in large numbers at Microsoft.
WorldMaker
The RT tablets were created because ARM processors were the only ones at the time hitting the benchmarks for tablet power consumption and form factor. It was entirely a play to get Intel to spend more money on x86-compatible tablet and mobile processors and it worked. The lockdown on the RT tablets was the simple basics of different processor architecture and very few Windows applications with working ARM builds.
chrisbennet
Kb3035583: Update installs Get Windows 10 app in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1

Yes, they spent my trust. I switched my settings so updates aren't installed automatically because now I can't trust them not to perform some unwanted upgrade. Running "Never10" (disables Win10 update) seems to have fixed the immediate problem but not the lost trust.

Piskvorrr
Yes. The GWX program, in my opinion, is malware (especially in its blatant disregard for lack of consent); the fact that it's the OS vendor pushing such stuff makes matters worse, not "okay".

(I'm not going to recount the man-hours and lost revenue we got from "admit it, you know you want WinX, and we'll give it to you NOW; it's not like you actually use the computers for anything")

Sylos
For me their new privacy policy was already enough. A company, which actively worked with the NSA in the past, asking me to sign a document which would allow them to access any of my personal data whenever they have a "good faith belief" that doing so is necessary. What could possibly go wrong?
DKnoll3
Well, glad you asked.

The part that goes wrong is that you don't have to view a Privacy Policy behind a tiny poorly colored hyperlink before clicking "I Agree".

titanix2
Yes it did. I start using a lot (as a student) Visual Studio and Windows 7 after a year with Linux. By this time products were good. I got a Windows Phone 7 and developed some app on it.

After that Microsoft release Win8 with its insane UI that make me loose time compared to previous versions and it was mandatory to develop for WP8. Then it release WP8 with no upgrade for existing phones. It purposely "uglify" VS 2012 removing all color and using CAPS menu which I found more difficult to use.

Things got even worst with Win10 where they actually didn't listen to feedack and release an OS with start menu not really usage. And forced people to migrate by changing their whole system! Also bugs, bugs and bugs with both the system, new version of Visual Studio. And on the phone side they kill the entire Nokia line-up and still no manage to release a usable version of Win10 for phone in on year. The insider builds each broke more stuff than they fix even to the point you cannot even deploy an app.

I franckly tired of this cr*p. Promises not kept. And the fact Microsoft had cards to do great stuff but self destroy them. Many times. I'm still using VS and C# because that's awesome but I will not change my system for Win10. That's why the .net core stuff is interesting.

tinus_hn
My trust in Microsoft was always limited because they have been behaving like crooks for as long as I remember. They have stooped to new lows though with the "Get Windows X" program and even more with Windows 10 itself. I do not trust them at all anymore. I actively avoid handling my personal data on devices running Microsofts software.
romanovcode
Not really, I also don't get what's the big deal about forcing you to upgrade to Win10. It seems that some people just cannot be satisfied no matter what they do. WinXP lockdown = bad, automatic (and free) upgrades = bad. Than what is good?

I use both Windows and Mac. I have no problem with both of them. Also, C# and VS rocks.

Artlav
The big deal is that it does not ask whether you want to upgrade or not. It just did, whenever it damn pleases, regardless of whether you have work to do or whether your computer/work environment can handle it.

That's the trust-killing dick move, not the Win 10 itself.

Piskvorrr
If it was asking and respecting the response, my response would be "ok, whatever." If it asks "do you want the X?" and then says "nevermind, you WANT THE X, and I'll give it to you NOW!!!", there's a tiny little problem with consent; spotting it is left as an exercise for the reader.

I don't feel like repeating why this became an actual, real-world problem, so here's a link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12115470

ionised
It's simple. Stop taking control away from users.
AnimalMuppet
> Than what is good?

Letting me decide what I want to do with my computer. "Force" is exactly what's wrong. It's my computer, not Microsoft's.

I don't understand how anyone can say that forcing a customer to do what you want is OK.

yulaow
The big deal is w10 breaks my laptop (dell l502x) with not working video drivers and not working (At all) touchpad drivers. Even if I install those of win8 they do not work as expected. Also one of their cumulative update keeps failing to install without telling me why (and then at every restart I had to wait 5 minutes for "we are installing updates" -> "we cannot install the update" -> reboot -> "we are reverting the changes" -> reboot ... and then windows would try again to download it and repeat. I had to block that update, block the automatic download and set my connection as "metered" to avoid all this shit. Online there are various posts in ms forums about that update and the only answer is "we are working on it, we think we know the problem, thread close." since Jan 2016.

Long story short: do not force-update a system if you are NOT DAMN SURE it works as expected, or at least decently.

It works all flawlessly with win8, win8.1 and win7. And basically any linux distro I used in the last 5 years.

Artlav
Quite a while ago. There never was any alternative as comfortable as the GUI tools people make of Windows, so i kept putting it off for a while.

But somewhere around the start of the Win 10 malware i decided to bite the bullet and moved my work environment to Linux for good.

Looking at where MS was going it would have happened anyway, so better sooner than later.

brudgers
If I didn't have a smartphone, I suppose it's theoretically possible the Windows 10 upgrade could be my greatest privacy/anonymity concern. That theory however depends on a a universe in which I never browsed the web with cookies enabled, never played Flash content that I wouldn't want to watch with my mother, and never typed anything into the Mountain View company's search box.

In this universe, I actually have less concern about Microsoft doing something creepy with my keystrokes than I do about Canonical doing so. I run Ubuntu and it wants to send my keystrokes to Amazon and whichever search engine has the current paid placement in Unity. At least with Microsoft it's not continuous direct monetization.

If Windows 10 was a big concern, I wouldn't install it or run it on any of my computers. But that's just me. I run Ubuntu for other reasons. The machines I've upgraded to Windows 10 have had most of the crap turned up except for the peer to peer upgrades. It's right there in the install.

Piskvorrr
"But everyone and their dog is doing the same" is just a sophisticated synonym for "meh." If everyone jumped off a bridge, would that make it okay for each of the participants?

Plus, the "privacy and anonymity" angle is just one of the facets; "unconsented install of whatever" goes beyond privacy (availability, anyone?).

DKnoll3
Decreasing attack vectors means supporting less solutions and organizations that do this shit, not more of them.
RUG3Y
I tried out Windows 10. I lasted 5 days, I think. I signed in to a Microsoft account, and the password on my PC was changed without my permission. That password was only saved in Lastpass. It's 16 digits of random characters. I eventually accessed my computer and immediately reverted to Windows 7.

I still haven't switched to Windows 10 on my home PC. I won't use Windows for anything work related but I need it for gaming. The day Linux is good enough for gaming, I'll say goodbye to Microsoft forever.

anonbanker
if that's all that's keeping you from linux, install Windows in KVM/Qemu and use GPU passthrough for graphics. full-speed gaming in a linux-owned sandbox will change your life.
RUG3Y
I'll have to look into that setup. Thanks.
WorldMaker
I've been happy with Windows 10 on all my devices. I didn't have any issues with GWX, because I switched over early on, at my convenience. What I hear about it since doesn't sound all that different from what I remember of iOS upgrade nags.
Piskvorrr
iOS nags. GWX oversteps the line and installs regardless of consent. That was the breaking point for me. (Win10 clean install is reasonably usable, although the mix of not-Metro-nooo and old Windows GUI style is weird)
WorldMaker
The buttons are "Update Now" and "Update Later"; "Update Later" is a sort of consent. I do think there was an issue with it using the window close button as an implicit "Update Later" and that is a bad UX they should have tried to avoid.

I don't mind the mix of app styles these days. I realize it will take a lot of effort for developers to modernize some old applications and there are many old applications that will never be modernized due to disinterest from developers or no active development or too big of a code base.

(I also like that modern apps can run on all my devices, including my phone, as I'm one of the few weird Windows 10 phone owners.)

Piskvorrr
And if you are not present at the screen, it ass-u-mes "where do you want to go today? Wait, that's not up to you: Windows X it is!" Very useful when employees turn up for morning shift to find a Brand New Os. Which doesn't play well with hardware (because the HW vendor is still working on a WinX driver). Which was the reason the upgrade from Win7 had not been greenlighted yet. But hey presto, all great and good; never mind that a company can't do its business; that's not a problem for MS, here's your bunch of broken boxes, and that's your problem now. We got what we wanted, screw everything else: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hkAhasCtTg8/Tny1nldYIFI/A...

And yes, this is exactly what "spent trust" is: orders came from On High to take off, nuke the site from orbit, repave with Win7 images, and never ever let Windows Update touch the boxes again (!): MS is now, by executive fiat, considered rogue ("we literally cannot afford another Windows X infection, WU is now an attack vector"). Everybody loses (except for that guy at MS whose bonus hinges on number of finished WinX installs; btw if he's reading this: you are, personally, a reason why we can't have nice things): security is undermined by no more patches, man-months are wasted on getting stuff to work again, there's plenty of MS-directed anger, customers are angry at company, not to mention we won't get WinX anytime soon, if at all. Whether anyone is willing to convince the mgmt that they've overreacted over MS's overeager installer is left as an exercise to the reader.

(The "close-as-yes" is also not "an issue", it is not mere "bad UI" - that is black-hat UX (and oh, very much against MS's own UX guidelines, hello hypocrisy!); deception, plain and simple.)

((The mix of app styles is but a minor quirk; and for really oooold apps, there's Virtual PC anyway.))

WorldMaker
«The "close-as-yes" is also not "an issue", it is not mere "bad UI" - that is black-hat UX (and oh, very much against MS's own UX guidelines, hello hypocrisy!); deception, plain and simple.»

I don't attribute that to malice but an honest mistake. I think there was a combination of engineering pride involved ("Why wouldn't people want to upgrade as soon as they could?") and engineering obstinacy ("We don't want another XP!"), perhaps even more than that marketing metric everyone thinks they were focused on.

As for the anecdote of the business outage. My condolences. It sounds like the HW vendor should have done a better job at messaging to Microsoft that their existing hardware driver was not testing compatible with Windows 10 (and maybe a better job at their driver in general). Also, companies had the options to use System Center and Group Policy to drive GWX away, and admittedly that's not an easy admin task, but generally something companies should do for mission critical PCs anyway. (Not to mention that GWX is/was different on Enterprise SKUs and possibly a sign your anecdotal company was using not properly licensed Home or Pro SKUs on mission critical machines.)

Piskvorrr
See? "Blah blah blah not MS problem (plus a poorly veiled accusation of piracy, to add insult to injury)"

Anyway, doesn't matter now if the GWX fiasco was malicious or not. Damage is done.

WorldMaker
Sorry, was not accusing of piracy, only possible ignorance. I've worked with companies that didn't know the difference between Home and Pro and Enterprise SKUs and I don't think everyone realizes how many small and medium sized business run on Windows Home editions.

Windows is a huge ecosystem and there is a lot of blame to pass around in every direction. I admitted that it was an MS problem, but I was also trying to point out that it was an ecosystem problem too. (There hasn't been a major driver architecture change between Vista and 10 and it blows my mind how many drivers needed new releases every Windows version between Vista and 10 and weren't just magically compatible.) Apologies if that point did not come across well.

Piskvorrr
Thank you for the clarification; my apologies for venting at you as if you were MS. There were ways that the organization should have blocked the upgrade better; and I agree that the need for new drivers where old ones ought to be fine is definitely not MS's fault.
ionised
What litle trust they had from me was obliterated by their practices over the last year.

Never buying anything Microsoft again.

I will begrudgingly continue to use W10 as I am a heavy-duty PC gamer but I've locked that shit down as tight as is humanly possible.

All my personal computing and development will be done solely on Arch from now on.

sirn
I'm actually OK with Windows 10 (with Telemetry off), but still think the GWX overstepped the line. I'm sure they started the program out of good will (make people aware that you can upgrade), but the later practice is nothing but malice.

However, my little bit of trust in Microsoft was spent after I bought their hardware, in particular the still-running Surface Pro 3 Battery-gate[1] (I'm the person who started the thread in Microsoft Answer forums.) Microsoft lied about battery replacement cost, keep treating that the battery problem didn't existed, and insist it's a $560 replacement instead of the promised $200. I'm lucky that media outlet picked this up otherwise I probably won't even get the "we're aware of the issue" response.

That pretty much stop me from ever thinking about being their customer again, for anything ever.

[1]: https://www.thurrott.com/hardware/73079/surface-pro-3s-simpl...

bwackwat
"Telemetry off"

Haha... Right.

anonbanker
Microsoft spent my trust with the Palladium incident, but I left beforehand for greener pastures/uptimes.

- Linux-only since 1999.