If you only read one article today, read this one from Ed Bott on ZDNet: If Microsoft wants to treat Windows 10 as a service, it has a responsibility
[See the full post at: Ed Bott unloads on the horrendous state of Windows as a, uh, “service”]
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Ed Bott unloads on the horrendous state of Windows as a, uh, “service”
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You know when Ed get’s upset with Microsoft its bad. Ed Bott has always tried to look at Windows 10 from a glass half full not half empty. Yeah, this last month has certainly placed a big dark cloud over Windows as a service.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that any Microsoft service received is self-service. Ed Bott’s article confirms this conclusion.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that any Microsoft service received is self-service.
Or perhaps we could say “Windows as a dis-service”.
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I have quite honestly struggled with the WaaS narrative surrounding W10. It seemed to originate in the failed mobile strategy for Windows where MS could not figure out how to get smartphone manufacturers to pay a large OEM license fee for Windows OS when Android was an option. However, we now have a situation where we have MS charging a significant license fee for various versions of W10 and using the W10 as a service narrative to cram down a EULA that basically traffics with the user as a pawn in MS’s continuing aspirations to convert a PC/Workstation OS into an advertising/surveillance platform. As is, WaaS strikes me as an intellectual muddle without any discernible near term resolution.
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Apart from the lack of information, for me the worst part of the Microsoft mess described by Ed is;
“But if you were one of the enthusiastic souls who downloaded and installed version 1809 in the first week that it was available, you have not received those updates. To get the fixes for what are undeniably serious bugs in a version of Windows 10 that was released through public channels, you have to add your device to the Windows Insider Program and choose the Slow or Release Preview Ring.”
I had switched to Release Preview to get 1809 early, which didn’t work because Microsoft apparently decided not to use that ring for the first time in 32 months. Then I stopped Insider builds as that setting had served no purpose. Then I had to revert to Release Preview to get the fixes. Crazy.
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I didn’t realize that; I figured they’d at least support the few copies that slipped through.
You actually just made me feel better that I dragged my feet and didn’t find the time to download v1809.
Thank you.
-Noel
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I think Microsoft have to do more than just slow down the ongoing development of Windows 10, they also have to slow down the remaining transfers to Windows 10 – because encouraging more users to switch to a broken system isn’t in a company’s best long-term interests. Far better to fix the broken system first, and then open up the market.
Central to this is extending the support for Windows 7 so that those users – who still number 40% of the market and remain Microsoft customers even if they haven’t switched to Windows 10 – have a proven and reliable system to transfer to, rather than being faced with a choice of upgrading to a worse system than the one they have, maintaining their existing system without adequate support, or switching to another system provider altogether.
None of those choices is palatable to the user at the moment, and forcing people into making them will not serve Microsoft well for the future. They need to bite the bullet now, acknowledge the problems they have with Windows 10, and announce an extension of the support for Windows 7 until say 2023 to coincide with the end of support for Windows 8.1. If in the meantime they cut the Windows 10 version upgrades to one a year and embark on some proper internal testing between releases they should be in a good position by then to have Windows 10 in a fit state to meet the objectives they have set for it. To achieve that they need to make Windows 10 a system that people want to upgrade to, not one that they have to upgrade to.
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I’d be interested in an explanation for MS’s own commentary when they say things like “only a limited number” of users were affected by various reported issues. I suppose anything less than the total population might be considered as a “limited number”, even if it’s only short by one user who got lucky. As I see it, however, such statements are a major disservice to all concerned when interpreted as mitigating or lessening the gravity of the issues themselves and their broader implications for producers and users alike.
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when an MS lackey like Ed Bott starts sounding frustrated, and it seems he has over the past year or so, you know things are NOT looking good.
Wonder how many times he’s said to MS “you’re killing me, Smalls”
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Ed Bott wrote, in the original article:
“Windows as a service” sounded like a good idea in 2015, when Microsoft released Windows 10.
Did it? Not to me. It was quite evident that Microsoft was trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Windows didn’t become the 90% market share juggernaut that it is being pitched as a service. It achieved that while being pitched as what it really is: a product.
“Software as a Service” is a loose term that can be interpreted to mean a lot of things, but in general, it is software that is sold and licensed on a subscription basis rather than in the traditional buy once, use forever model. Windows, of course, is software. For enterprise customers, Windows often is sold in this manner, so it really is “Windows as a Service.” For those of us who are not enterprise customers, but who get Windows with a PC we buy, as boxed software, or increasingly as a paid download, it’s not. If you pay once and can use it forever (not that it will be updated forever), that’s the same it’s always been, which is to say that it’s a product, not a service.
People started claiming MS was going to start selling Windows on a subscription basis (for everyone) almost as soon as Windows 10 arrived, and MS has assured us this is not the case. At the same time, they’ve been telling us that Windows is now a service. If that contradiction didn’t sound alarm bells, I don’t know what to tell you.
Clearly, MS is not using the usual definition of SaaS when it claims that Windows is now a service. If there is one category of software that really and truly does not lend itself to SaaS, it’s the operating system! Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, I know) notes that “SaaS is typically accessed by users using a thin client via a web browser.” While “typically” leaves a lot of wiggle room, it does illustrate that SaaS is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the bare-metal, hardware-abstracting OS itself.
Given the various ways that Microsoft has changed Windows in the WaaS era, it seems evident that they’re trying to make it into what AOL or Prodigy used to be in the pre-internet days. The AOL software (which used IE as a core, in the Windows version at least) was very much a thin client for the various services AOL offered. AOL would often change the service in various ways, and people would often complain about it, but ultimately, it was understood that the service was whatever AOL was willing to offer, and you could either take it or leave it.
Microsoft’s recent decision to make the web search from the start menu mandatory (to remove the option to turn it off, in other words) strikes me as just this kind of thing. Microsoft’s goal is to drive traffic to Bing, where they can offer up sponsored links and make money, so drive it they will. It’s outrageous for an OS to do that with no option to turn it off, but for an old-school online service like AOL used to be, it’s quite normal.
AOL, though, didn’t try to blend this functionality with the OS itself. Windows seems to be trying to do just that… gradually morphing the OS (that people have no choice but to accept if they want to keep using their Windows-exclusive programs) into a front-end for their own cloud services, much like the AOL client was a front-end for the services AOL offered (which would have been called cloud services if the term had been in use at the time).
It hardly seems like a good idea to use an obsolete online service from the dialup modem days as the blueprint for OS development today, but that’s the closest analog for what they’re doing. Abandon the OS development model that saw them rise to 90% market share, and instead follow the model for a defunct, obsolete category of online service that was never (and could never be) anywhere close to being an OS.
To say that MS has lost the plot with Windows would be an understatement. If they want to make an online service, by all means, they should do so… but the last one they tried, MSN, didn’t exactly set the world on fire. The only reason to try to blend that kind of thing with the OS is to prevent people from once again saying NO to the online service MS wants them to subscribe to. Build it into the OS they are trapped in, give them no option to turn it off! They’ll be members of the new MSN whether they want to be or not.
That seems to be the big lesson MS learned from the Windows 8 debacle. It was evident that if MS delivered a version of Windows that the users didn’t like, they wouldn’t upgrade, choosing instead to remain with their previous version. The lesson we’d hoped MS would learn was to stop offering products the users don’t like. The lesson they actually learned was that if you give your customers a choice, they might say no, so don’t give them a choice.
When I saw what Windows 10 was like back in 2015, in the midst of the GWX scandal, I can say for sure that “WaaS” did not ever strike me as a good idea. Was any of what has been happening really that hard to predict as the months went by? I rejected Windows 10 on my main PC within the first hour of using it back in August 2015, but I had hope that MS would listen to its customers and fix it. I kept it on a test PC to monitor its progress.
By the end of that year, the handwriting was on the wall. I’d completely given up on 10, wiping it off of my test PC and repurposing its SSD for a new Linux installation on my main PC (installed alongside Windows 7 at that time). That was three years ago.
It was evident even then where Microsoft was headed with Windows, and I wasn’t willing to go there today, or ever. “WaaS” was the name associated with this mess from the first time I read the term. That has not changed.
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Given the various ways that Microsoft has changed Windows in the WaaS era, it seems evident that they’re trying to make it into what AOL or Prodigy used to be in the pre-internet days. The AOL software (which used IE as a core, in the Windows version at least) was very much a thin client for the various services AOL offered. AOL would often change the service in various ways, and people would often complain about it, but ultimately, it was understood that the service was whatever AOL was willing to offer, and you could either take it or leave it.
John Dvorak said exactly the same thing a few years ago.
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Given the various ways that Microsoft has changed Windows in the WaaS era, it seems evident that they’re trying to make it into what AOL or Prodigy used to be in the pre-internet days. The AOL software (which used IE as a core, in the Windows version at least) was very much a thin client for the various services AOL offered. AOL would often change the service in various ways, and people would often complain about it, but ultimately, it was understood that the service was whatever AOL was willing to offer, and you could either take it or leave it.
John Dvorak said exactly the same thing a few years ago.
I saw the Dvorak mention and I couldn’t resist logging in to mention- I listen to Dvorak on his and Adam Curry’s podcast every week, and it sounded like he actually got bit by Windows updating whenever it feels like it during the beginning of the live stream just this past week.
Sorry if that’s off topic, but the odd concurrence of your comment after hearing his own annoyance a few days ago compelled me to mention it.
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That is interesting, but what does it mean?
That the number of active users isn’t that meaningful for the long term potential of a service?
That it was a great service at one time?
There might be a lesson to learn from that. You seem to really enjoy Windows as a service and you bring an interesting and enlightened dissenting voice here. You are entitled to your opinion.
However, around me, I see mostly dissatisfied customers or indifferent ones when they haven’t yet had significant issues or because they never really got a good grasp on their computing experience anyway so for them, it is still just the same mysterious beast for which they need to call their IT friend to tame occasionally. How many home users, not admins or even power users, are active users that are really into WaaS?
To me, WaaS is a cheap trick to justify a future subscription model or an equivalent monetization scheme using you as data, because in the mind of users, there isn’t that much to add to an OS that justifies upgrading often. I never ever hear any regular folk talk to me about how excited they are about a new version of Windows, unlike back in the days where it was fashionable to make oral dissertations about how cool your new computer is. We don’t discuss laundry machines that much at family parties and Windows has become the laundry machine that wanted to be turned into a connected laundromat.
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What a great piece of writing again, Ascaris. You should write tech articles.
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Brilliant, and to the point. Well done, Ascaris!
I wouldn’t use the AOL model for Windows as a service (or at this point, a “Dis-Service!”). I like to look at what’s happening with Gaming, specifically two examples..Blizzard with Diablo Immortal, and EA with Command and Conquer.
Previously, you had two companies who had released earlier versions of the games on PC, but who only profited at time of sale of the game. Now, both companies are looking at moving those franchises to mobile, in order to generate a constant stream of micro transactions.
Fans of both were outraged (the Blizzard devs were booed at BlizzardCon, no shock considering the people there grew up with Diablo on PC, and had spent $60 to attend). Didn’t matter to Blizzard, who were moving developers from PC to mobile, because of the potential profits. EA..well, that ship has sailed.
And that’s what we’re seeing here. Microsoft has no intention of changing their course. MS is profitable now, with the cloud, and sees Windows as a Service as the best way to monetize users. MS knows they control the market, certainly on the business/government sides and on the home side, and will take full advantage.
Sure, you’ll see the apologies, but there won’t be any extension of Windows 7 (unless you’re a business with an extended service contract). Redmond won’t listen to Ed any more than they listened to Susan. The only thing on their minds is how to make their shareholders happy.
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And here we thought the mainframe and terminals were long gone.
The pundits championing the cloud today don’t seem to remember how revolutionary decentralized computing was compared to the centralized, thin-client model (even if it wasn’t yet called that). This was made possible by the rise of the microcomputer, a term hardly ever used anymore. The computerization of just about everything that has led to increased efficiency and productivity across the board didn’t happen during the mainframe era– the large majority of it happened during the microcomputer era.
Microsoft has also risen to prominence during the ‘micro’ era. In the early days, supporting the decentralized (personal) computing model meant teaming with end users to wrest control from the giants like IBM. It was good for consumers, and there can be no doubt, if you chart Microsoft’s growth, that it was good for them .
Now that the mainframe giants been vanquished, the former challengers have become the new giants, so there’s no more benefit in trying to assist end users in opposing the big guys by letting them control their own computing tools. They are the new big guys, and they want the control (and the steady revenue stream) that their centralized predecessors had.
The marketing guys just want something new that they can paint as the next big thing. It doesn’t much matter if it is really better than the old thing… slap a new coat of paint on it, invent a couple of catchy new buzzwords (“cloud”) to stick on there, and call it the new revolution. Unfortunately, the tech pundits seem to have fallen for it, and certainly the investors have. It’s evidently relatively easy to dazzle investors with corporate-speak that speaks a lot of words but still manages not to say anything.
The right mixture of incomprehensible buzzwords will convince the investors that the company making the pitch is on the cutting edge. Perhaps they don’t want to admit to not understanding a word of what the pitchmen are saying, so they just nod and give their huzzahs. The more knowledgeable people realize that the investors didn’t understand what was being said because it didn’t actually make any sense, but they’re immediately denounced as old-fashioned Luddites who “just don’t get it” if they speak to that effect. It’s a 21st century “Emperor’s New Clothes,” with one important exception: It’s not plain to see that it’s all a sham to the average observer that hasn’t heard the sales pitch. The child in the fable who brought everyone to their senses doesn’t exist.
People have written here before about how the commenters at The Reg are some of the most knowledgeable around when it comes to matters within the IT sphere. It’s notable, then, how negatively the large majority of “commentards” perceive anything “Cloud.” The PHBs (pointy-haired bosses, a reference to Dilbert) don’t listen, claiming that these IT people don’t get how awesome all of this is. The bosses, pretending they understand the pitchmen, are telling the IT people they don’t understand how wonderful this new IT paradigm is. But it has to be wonderful and new! It had ever so many buzzwords! What more proof does one need?
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The cloud has several issues unique to it. First is the financial stability of the cloud vendor, if they shutdown you may lose all your data. Second is the need to be connected to the cloud vendor, no connection is no access to the data. Third is you are spending money monthly to a vendor whom you do not have full control over. Fourth is you have no control over the cloud hardware. If you have your data stored in house you substitute more up front costs and slightly more staff for complete control of your infrastructure.
Supposedly you gain more security with the cloud. But this is only true if you configure your cloud correctly and many do not.
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This complaint is about recognizing customers need accurate information from the source, not ‘bafflegab’ or silence. What happened yesterday or what is going on with 1809, no one really knows outside of few employees. This means everyone is relying on the best guesses of someone like Woody or Susan or whatever rumors are floating around. While Woody and Susan try their best to get accurate information out there is a limit to what they can do when MS is not talking or if they are it is in bafflegab.
The net effect of all these idiocies is to antagonize current customers and convert many into excustomers. This is how companies die.
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In this case, Ed Bott is correct. The fixes were not released through normal channels, only released to the Insider program when 1809 was pulled and returned to the Insiders for further testing. So, if you wanted the fixes, the way to get them was join the Insider Slow or Release ring.
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But please @b, really, why do you accept or propose as given that defering “for a year beyond CBB/SAC with a few clicks” is an acceptable standard procedure?
Where is the good business practice of shipping a finished product on time?
Failing that, as all good businesses will from time to time, delay shipping until the product is finished.
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Missing the point. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Many average Joe’s ended up living with it, not knowing how to roll back. Not everyone is a technician.
Hopefully the GWX days are behind us for good.
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Clicking the X has always had the same effect as cancelling an action or exiting a program or installation of a program. It’s been universally true since Windows first came to be. Clicking the X = cancel the action and close the window. Period. Randomly changing that established fact to make clicking the X mean “Proceed with the installation!” is malicious and deceptive. They knew what they were doing. Stop making excuses for their actions.
Clicking the X means cancel and close. End of story. Changing that action to mean the exact opposite for the purpose of tricking people into installing Windows 10 is not defensible. Presumably, using Alt-F4 to close it would also have the same effect as clicking the X. Why should anyone think that they now had to look for small print somewhere to cancel an action when clicking the X had ALWAYS done that? There was already an established way to cancel an installation that now meant proceed instead. Stop blaming the user. It’s ridiculous.
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There’s absolutely no doubt Microsoft broke their own rules for the meaning of the red x. I refer you to an earlier comment I posted months ago on this same topic in a different thread:
Changing the behaviour of the red x to mean “Yes, please, go ahead and infest my system with Windows 10” was pure deception (desperation?) by Microsoft.
Users who clicked it did absolutely nothing wrong – in fact, they did what years of using Windows had taught them to do, with expectation of the same result.
Whether Microsoft offered/buried options in mice type somewhere else in the dialogue box doesn’t make it right.
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@oscarcp, forgive me if I’ve misunderstood what you wrote, but as far as I can tell Woody’s post here (from which the present thread derives) is talking about this piece by Ed Bott.
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With all the problems coming from the Win 10 camp as of late – the one that bothers me the most is this activation issue from the last two days.
How is it even possible that a machine that was “activated” say – 2 years ago – suddenly becomes “inactivated”?
This must infer some sort of live connection, phone-home or other mechanism that is checking status at some mysterious interval.
I was under the impression that once I enter my product key (or did a “free” upgrade from Windows 7 back in the day – which must use it’s key) – I’m good and should be good forever. Unless I change out a motherboard or something major.
But it is clear that Windows is doing much more in checking license status at least daily or maybe hourly or minute by minute.
I would think the user base would be more fired up about this issue than anything else that is going on.
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hi woody.
you should also see the reaction from Paul Thurrott from his recent article:
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/191016/and-you-thought-the-1809-delay-didnt-hurt-anyone
yup, it is still a “fiasco” from his POV
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I wonder if any of those jilted PC makers have considered approaching IBM\RedHat to discuss a new partnership. It seems to me that a two tiered product line offering RHEL for business/education and Fedora for home/student would make a natural fit.
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Paul writes,
“Companies like Samsung and Lenovo are taking the biggest risk with these devices,” Brad notes. “They are backing a Microsoft initiative to move away from Intel and experiment with ARM and for their loyalty, Microsoft is not upholding its promise to ship a version of Windows on time.”
Maybe instead of Intel, it’s Microsoft that these companies should be moving away from. I’d take any flavor of Linux on which I can install a Vista or Windows 7 Aero theme.
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What matters is that Microsoft knows who Ed Bott is. They like him. He has always been open about being a fanboy. It does not matter if 99.99% of Windows users know who he is, though I think you are understating how well known he is.
When the rats on a ship are no longer below decks, the ship is taking on way too much sea water. It is probably sinking. When they start abandoning the ship, you know it is sinking.
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Anonymous #231816 : ” Microsoft is an empire. It has barrels of gold, power and prominence, just like the great empires that preceded it. It also suffers from virulent levels of hybris. ”
The levels of hubris that matter are not of those working 8 to 5 at MS, but of those running it at (and from) the top. Going along with the “Empire’s fall” metaphor: the ones so afflicted are the CEOs of some very large corporations who, these days, are not subject, in practice, to any serious accountability for their actions (as the Emperors of old), for as long as enough big shareholders (as old-time wealthy aristocrats that were, often, also powerful generals) are happy with the dividends they get on their investments and are willing to continue to lend them their support.
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I’m not sure hubris is in play here.I do think there are many honest, hard working people in Microsoft who are trying their best to put out a proper product.
I see this as more of “Emperor’s new clothes” syndrome.Too many people are agreeing with Nadella’s vision, and too many shareholders simply are looking at the bottom line, and not the future of the company. It’s a common problem in companies once they get to a certain size, and aren’t concerned about competition.
In those situations, it’s very hard to stand up for quality, for fair business practices, and in general stand up for the customers. It’s safer simply to “go along” with everyone else. “Yep, those new robes look great!”
It’s easier to make apologies, and make promises that won’t get kept. As long as profits go up, and the shareholders are happy, who cares about the company’s future? But that’s why competition is essential to a company’s health…if you need to make your case to the consumer every time you put out a product, you won’t make the mistakes we’re seeing now with MS.
Who couldn’t see this coming (and failing)… Within hours of the very first pre-release of Windows 8? Seriously, I did. Most folks thought that 8 backslid. Very few think it’s moved forward much since… Hint: why are so many still running Windows 7?
Microsoft is an adept manager of mediocrity. They need to become an adept manager of excellence to get people to trust them to run their digital lives. That’s a tall order, and one that can’t be accomplished by Marketing.
-Noel
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Noel Carboni: “Microsoft is an adept manager of mediocrity.”
Amen to that! And something that is becoming relentlessly more and more so as the bureaucracies, both in private firms and in governments, necessary evils that they unfortunately are, grow and grow, impelled by a dark corollary of Peter’s Principle, and tend to expand beyond their usefulness. Mediocrity, seen from their point of view, as it does not rock the boat for them, is good.
Assuming that most Windows users are helpless klutzes, MS designs for the lowest common denominator, because, at least as I think they see it, of those that are not like the majority, the ones that use Windows to run small businesses or do creative work at home from which at least part of their income is derived, are most likely too small a percentage of the total to bother with, while the rest of the “not-klutzes” probably belong to organizations with which MS has juicy contracts to help make Windows work for them.
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Microsoft is an adept manager of mediocrity. They need to become an adept manager of excellence to get people to trust them to run their digital lives.
Microsoft is not a person, it’s a business… so no, it isn’t going to become some sort of sentient being (certainly not whilst Cortana is its flagship AI) and ‘become an adept manager of excellence’. Satya Nadella’s a cloud guy and MS revenue from Azure is booming (whilst revenue from Windows is slowing dramatically). Where’s the incentive for the MS CEO to order an about-face and fix Windows?
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Rick Corbett: “Where’s the incentive for the MS CEO to order an about-face and fix Windows?”
Good question! Could the answer be that the incentive surely should be to make sure that MS may still have a leg to stand on after the collapse of Azure and “everything in the Cloud”, following a long series of spectacular attacks by hackers and hostiles of various kinds and origins that finally brings them down in flames brighter than Nadella’s visions? But, wait!: that is long term, so why bother?
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Noel Carboni:
“Microsoft is an adept manager of mediocrity.”
Amen to that! And something that is becoming relentlessly more and more so as the bureaucracies, both in private firms and in governments, necessary evils that they unfortunately are, grow and grow, impelled by a dark corollary of Peter’s Principle, and tend to expand beyond their usefulness.
In this context, there is also Parkinson’s Law in operation. 🙂
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